I just reinstalled Civ4 today along with WarLords and BtS. I can start the game, but at various points, the game just freezes and I can do nothing except reboot my computer.

I am running:
Vista Ultimate SP1
4GB memory
ATI 2600XT
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio

Thanks in advance,
SimUmp

are there any error messages? does something like this happen with any other programs?

No error messages. I have installed all the other Civ games (I have Chronicles) and they run fine. It just stops working and I have to restart my computer.

Hmm another 4gig of ram problem. Thats 2 in 2 days. I don't like this. Hopefully ORI can solve it or I must go spend more monies, more monies more monies! :)

:hmm:
and it happens with all three of them? i.e. Civ4 - Warlords - BtS?
are your graphics drivers and DirectX 9c updated?

Hmm another 4gig of ram problem. Thats 2 in 2 days. I don't like this. Hopefully ORI can solve it or I must go spend more monies, more monies more monies! :)

normally I'd blame Vista - but I believe this would be too easy ;)

Affirmative

please post your dxdiag results.

also start a game until it freezes - then kill the program any way you like and start the event viewer (click for howto (http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vista/vista_event_viewer.htm#Launching_the_Vista_Event_V iewer)) - look for anything that looks like civilization or firaxis games events and try posting it here - maybe something is logged by windoofs :)

I have looked in Event Viewer but cannot find anyhting related to Civ4. Only thin showing an error is WMI. I cannot even Ctrl-Alt-Delete out of Civ4. The ONLY thing I can do is press the reset button on my PC.

Here are my DXDiag results (pulled them earlier for Firaxis).

Interestingly enough, I can run this game on a laptop with XP, but not on my powerhouse Vista desktop.

Please, I actually registered here in desperation so I can get this problem fixed. My game only started doing this until recently. I played a few games on Civ bts before but as of late it suddenly crashes. There are no error messages whatsoever, the game simply freezes. The screen is still there and I can still move the cursor but nothing moves. I can't escape out of it either. It's not even consistent. It crashes randomly. I could play for 5 minutes or a good hour and then all the sudden the game just...stops. It would be nice if I could figure out why and how the hell to fix it. The only way I can escape out of the game is completely shutting down my computer and then rebooting it. Please someone help! I feel like ripping my hair out.

@SimUmp-SGC:
something is weird with your memory management - you do not actually have 4GB of RAM since your graphics card eats 1.5GB of this :eek: leaving you with just 2.5GB of available RAM. This in itself *should* not cause freezes - but it is such a weird behavior that I would not put it past both Vista and Civ to get into trouble.
When you installed the new graphics drivers did you uninstall the old ones first? sometimes the installers leave parts of the old drivers in place - which leaves old bugs in as well.
I ask this because from a quick google search it seems that your card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT) has a history of causing program freezes both on Mac and on PC - the Mac problems were supposed to be fixed with a firmware update but it seems that the PC troubles were solved incrementally by new drivers.
How to uninstall drivers in Vista (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/install/uninstall.mspx) - do that and reinstall the latest graphics driver.
PS: just in case: you might also want to log a game freeze ingame see my below text :)

Please, I actually registered here in desperation so I can get this problem fixed. My game only started doing this until recently. I played a few games on Civ bts before but as of late it suddenly crashes. There are no error messages whatsoever, the game simply freezes. The screen is still there and I can still move the cursor but nothing moves. I can't escape out of it either. It's not even consistent. It crashes randomly. I could play for 5 minutes or a good hour and then all the sudden the game just...stops. It would be nice if I could figure out why and how the hell to fix it. The only way I can escape out of the game is completely shutting down my computer and then rebooting it. Please someone help! I feel like ripping my hair out.

Welcome to Civfanatics :)

Please do the same as above: make sure the game is patched to date, post your dxdiag results, have a look at the event viewer (howto for xp (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308423)), and please also enable logging for civilization (open the civilizationIV.ini for BtS - set all 4 items with "log" in their name from 0 to 1 - play a game until it freezes - kill it and post all contents of \my games\beyond the sword\logs as a zip file here). You can attach files by clicking on go advanced and then on manage attachments below the reply box :)

normally I'd blame Vista - but I believe this would be too easy ;)

All I know is you should get an award for support tackling continous problems.
You must be top 5 most appreciated posters here.
NOw we got a nice google support database I can hit when I get bargin bin bts
Thanks

Ori,

Thank you for the help, but now I believe it is not Civ4 that is messing up, but rather my new motherboard I got a month ago. It just dawned on me this happened right after I installed Vista on it, and it went away, but now it has come back after I reinstalled Vista. I think I might have gotten a bad motherboard. I will update when I get a new one as to if that is the problem or not.

please post your dxdiag results.

also start a game until it freezes - then kill the program any way you like and start the event viewer - look for anything that looks like civilization or firaxis games events and try posting it here - maybe something is logged by windoofs :)

Hi everybody,
I read the whole discussion about the freezing game, so these are my logs 180768, 180770. Usually the game freeze and I cannot do anything but hit the reset button, but sometimes it switchs on desktop screen showing the "send error message report" to send a bug report to microsoft. Having a 24" wide monitor I use the game with a 1280x768 resolution with medium details. Hope anyone can give me advices on what to do. I use lot of games on my pc: Diablo, DiabloII, World of Warcraft, Dark Reign, CesarIII, Faraon, SimCity 4... Only Civ4 crashes.

The last "Send error report" showed me this:

AppName: civ4warlords.exe AppVer: 2.1.3.0 ModName: cvgamecoredll.dll
ModVer: 1.0.0.1 Offset: 000f8709

Hi to all!

I just read this topic and I have same problem. Did anyone found solution for this kind of problem? Is it helpful if I reinstall Windows or anything like that? I just installed new drivers for my graphic card and it doesn't work....

Interesting thing is that i played game all the time, and it runs good, but yesterday I experienced this problem, and now i can not play any kind of civilization game! ... For all other games there is no such problems ... I also tried all of this stuff in this topic and it doesn't seemed to work ...

Any help will be excellent ... tnx in advance

The freezing issue looks solved buying a new graphic card, nVidia this time. I had an ATI.