Civ 4 and 64 bit Vista and Win 7

I have been trying to run Warlords on my brand new 64 bit Vista Home Premium laptop for the past couple of months without success. After countless calls to 2k tech support, I am at the end of my patience with their inability to even address much less correct the compatability issues I am having with the game. I have been promised Tier 2 Support which has basically amounted to a load of techs stepping on each other's toes to email me the same useless suggestions to delete the Civ4.ini or the game cache. Does 2k recognize that there is a problem with 64 bit OSs in Civ4?

I have attached my dxdiag and some error screenshots for you all to have a look at and I hope that someone with some experience dealing with these issues can help me find a solution that allows me to play Civ again. Vanilla Civ4 seems to run okay, but it is unstable and cannot load mods or patches without exhibiting the issues detailed below. I would love to try BTS, Colonization, or Revolution, but with these issues it is pointless to buy them.

The issues:
1.) System hang on the splash screen necessitating a hard reboot
2.) Failure to launch in both vanilla and Warlords after any patch installation
3.) Warlords will run occasionally, but under "Custom Game" I get a "you must provide game name" error that I can't get past to actually play. Running from the "Play Now" option sometimes launches the game, but then the Civics menu within the game has no button to allow civics to be changed plus other game functionality issues
4.) Graphics on unit and building thumbnails get progressively more twisted as the game length extends, this is corrected for a time by reinitializing the game, but it always returns
5.) Random game crashes at periodic intervals
6.) Reinstalls and registry scrubs provide no relief

I am also assuming that my free upgrade to 64x Windows 7 will not help a bit, but I would appreciate any input from those that have tried it, as well.

Thanks for any help or insights you all can provide.

Standard troubleshooting says to update to the latest OS service packs and video drivers (which your DXDiag suggests you haven't done).

Looks like a video glitch and not necessarily a 64-bit OS glitch. Video problems can be caused by over heating or faulty RAM. Stress testing and watching temps could rule that out.

I have just acquired Windows 7, which supposedly is an improvement on Vista in being able to accommodate programs devised for Windows XP. However, when I installed Civ IV, I was informed by Micorosft that there was "a known compatibility problem" between Civ IV and Windows Vista/Windows 7 and that they were "working on it". I played for a bit all the same but got problems with my computer and had to uninstall Civ IV in order to solve them. I would be grateful for any news about further developments.

Öjevind Lång;8653687 said:

I have just acquired Windows 7, which supposedly is an improvement on Vista in being able to accommodate programs devised for Windows XP. However, when I installed Civ IV, I was informed by Micorosft that there was "a known compatibility problem" between Civ IV and Windows Vista/Windows 7 and that they were "working on it".

Click to expand...

Plain Civ IV without expansions is not compatible with Vista/Windows 7 unless you apply the latest patch. You will get that message until you patch the game.

Loopy said:

Standard troubleshooting says to update to the latest OS service packs and video drivers (which your DXDiag suggests you haven't done).

Click to expand...

That is interesting, I went through every single piece of hardware on my system and ran 'update driver' and they all came back as up to date. I also ran Windows Update a couple of times to be sure I got everything. Then I did a reinstall of Civ4 and Warlords all the way through the latest patch and still had the same problems. Could you elaborate on what my dxdiag says is not up to date?

Also, how do I watch temps and is it easy to stress test my RAM? Not familiar with the techniques needed to accomplish this.

Thanks!

Your dxdiag indicates that you have service pack 1 installed on your vista, there is a service pack 2 available.