Problems with chipset/graphic adapter???

I am in a late stage of my second game in Conquests (I abandoned the first one) and it is more and more difficult to play. From time to time (and more and more often) there appear annoying popup windows (sometimes stacked ones) entitled "Microsoft Visual C++ Debug Library" and they say something like (always the same text, various numbers)

Debug Error!
Program [...]\Civ3Conquests.exe
DAMAGE: before Normal block (#415520) at 0x108509E0.
Press Retry to debug the application

and three buttons:

Abort Retry Ignore

If I press "Abort", program stops immediately. I don't remember what about "Retry" but when I press "Ignore", I can play again (sometimes I need to kill some other popups). From time to time when I press "Ignore", the game crashes.

Usually it happens when I move stacks of units or at least there is some unit animation active but also when I view Civilopedia, when I call Science Advisor (I don't remember what about the other ones) and upon exit (usually I need to press "Ignore" 3 or 4 times - after one popup there appear next ones).

I have an Athlon XP 1900+, mainboard Abit KG7 Lite (mixed chipset AMD761/VIA something), 256 MB DDR RAM, graphic adapter NVidia TNT M64 (32 MB RAM), HDDs IBM DeskStar 15 and 30 GB,

OS: Windows 2000 Professional US SP 3.

Game: Civ 3 US with fixpak 1.29f + C3C US 1.00 (installing patch 1.02 didn't help).

I had some problems with Vanilla Civ3 (frequent hangups/restarts in late games) but it was a problem with BIOS - after I had installed more recent version, the problem vanished.

Do you have any ideas, what may be the reason of my problems?


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

Game save? Specifically, before the crash occured, and the steps to reproduce. Where you doing anything when the problems happened? (diplomacy, menus, etc?).

Game save? Specifically, before the crash occured, and the steps to reproduce. Where you doing anything when the problems happened? (diplomacy, menus, etc?).

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I don't have saved game here but perhaps I will bring it tomorrow. It seems to crash either randomly or after enough popups appeared. Popup windows appear especially when scrolling the map (e.g. when moving a stack of units to a distant place) or calling an advisor (I remember the Science one but I don't remember what about the other ones). Perhaps it has something to do with updating the screen - e.g. popups appear when the program draws tech icons, when some areas are already filled and the other ones are still empty.

It happens very often, many windows each turn. Sometimes game crashes, I reload from autosave and I am not able to finish the turn because it crashes again (happened a couple of times).

Anyway, I will perform some more tests today in the evening and I will send a saved game.

Another strange thing (but it may be not a bug) is that when I make a railroad to a newely conquered city, they don't get connected but perhaps it disappears after a few turns (I am at war with the Zulu and the cities I captured at the beginning are connected and the next ones not).


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

The railroad bug was already mentioned.

I uploaded two saved files, they are available here: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/saves.ace

Save 1480: I have loaded it a few times and once it produced mentioned popup when loading! I had finished this turn and the game crashed during the next one.

Autosave 1485: the last save before crash. In this turn I had finished the Zulu, declared war to Sumerians (planned to attack them in the next turn) and moved units (made some railroads, stacked about 20 cav. next to the remaining Sumerian city, replaced Cavalry by Infantry in some conquered cities), no other actions before crash.

I am (almost) sure that crashes are associated with popups but sometimes they happen after many popups had appeared, sometimes after a few only. Popups show in situations mentioned in my first post but also:

- when entering cities

- when waiting for the next turn (e.g. after some messages about produced units have been displayed)

- when selecting an unit in a stack, especially if the stack is in a city.

It was enough to load Autosave 1485, wait and do nothing - from time to time, at apparently random times, there appeared a new popup.

It appears that chance of a crash is greater if I play faster (shorter delays between moving units etc.), if I play slowly there are less popups and no crashes but after some time I forget that I had to play slower... It makes me suspect that when I play faster, there may be some buffer overflow(?) and e.g. the program "thinks" that I press "Abort" instead of "Ignore" (???).


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

I tried reproducing this in version 1.15, using the savegame above, but didn't succeed.

Would you happen to have any 'programming' software installed on your machine?

No, it is almost pure Win2000 with SP 3. I use it almost only to play Civ 3, my main OS is OS/2. Apart from Civ 3 and C3C I have installed drivers to my printer (Panasonic KX-P 7105), digital camera and an OCR program.

Now I am almost sure that the game doesn't crash but e.g. if I let a stack of workers to make railroad (so I press "R") and in the meantime a popup appears, sometimes it happens too fast for me to notice that and I keep pressing "R", popup "thinks" that I choose "Retry" and it results in quitting the game. Or if I press "Enter", it acts like if I had chosen "Abort", the result is the same. If I am careful enough I can play quite long without unintended exit.

I don't know what is the reason of these $#@%^& popups - perhaps something with chipset and graphic adapter.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

I have bought a new mainboard (i865 chipset) and processor (P4 3 GHz) and the problem disappeared.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.