Civ IV and Civ IV Warlords startup problem - help!

Here's my problem:

Civ IV Warlords, recently bought via Direct2Drive.com, doesn't ... "work", in a sense. I installed it after installing Civ IV, made sure everything was up to date, and ran it. I waited about 10 minutes before the initializing screen came up, and after another 5 minutes the game booted up. So, I went to Single Player and attempted to start a game.. and I was immediately sent back to my desktop for about 10 minutes, when the Civ IV Warlords startup screen suddenly popped up again.

Does anyone know what's going on, and how I can fix this? (My computer meets and exceeds the Civ IV Warlords recommended requirements.)


Alternatively, Civ IV takes about 4 minutes to boot up fully, is that normal?

Vandell said:

Here's my problem:

Civ IV Warlords, recently bought via Direct2Drive.com, doesn't ... "work", in a sense. I installed it after installing Civ IV, made sure everything was up to date, and ran it. I waited about 10 minutes before the initializing screen came up, and after another 5 minutes the game booted up. So, I went to Single Player and attempted to start a game.. and I was immediately sent back to my desktop for about 10 minutes, when the Civ IV Warlords startup screen suddenly popped up again.

Does anyone know what's going on, and how I can fix this? (My computer meets and exceeds the Civ IV Warlords recommended requirements.)


Alternatively, Civ IV takes about 4 minutes to boot up fully, is that normal?

Click to expand...

No. Not normal. I can ready to choose "single play" after less than 1 minute click Civ4Warlords icon.

Regards,
Arto.

Vandell said:

Civ IV Warlords, recently bought via Direct2Drive.com, doesn't ... "work", in a sense. I installed it after installing Civ IV, made sure everything was up to date, and ran it. I waited about 10 minutes before the initializing screen came up, and after another 5 minutes the game booted up.

Alternatively, Civ IV takes about 4 minutes to boot up fully, is that normal?

Click to expand...

Artosoft said:

No. Not normal. I can ready to choose "single play" after less than 1 minute click Civ4Warlords icon.

Click to expand...

i'm having a variation on the same theme. i bought warlords from direct2drive yesterday and have had no success yet, i whined about it here. in my case, it took about 15 minutes for the warlords loading screen to come up. well by that time i was already uninstalling it to reinstall it . so i cancelled that loading screen, finished the already-begun uninstall, reinstalled, and this time after clicking the shortcut i did nothing else on the pc. i just sat there reading a magazine, and timed it.

after 17 minutes, the warlords loading screen did finally appear. it did not successfully finish loading, which is another issue, and i've already given up on the d2d after less than 24 hours. every time that nothing appeared to be happening, between clicking the shortcut and the loading screen coming up. warlords was in the background, and didn't show up on task manager as a program. i could see it listed as a process, taking up more than 90% of my CPU. i'd noticed the lag and started investigating, that's when i figured something was broken and started the first uninstall to try to reinstall it. i don't know anything about computers and i don't know if that's normal but it sounded weird to me.

the thing is, i already own the disk version, but my drive is having problems recognizing it . the game itself plays just fine, with no lag even when i play in windows mode and switch between apps often, and i know many people can't do that on their computers. obviously my system can handle warlords as a game without any issues. there's just something about this d2d version that is fighting with my machine.

arto, did it take a bizarrely long time the very first time you tried to play after installing? if you have the d2d version like vandell and i do, that is. the disk version never did that for me, so if that's the version you have it won't give me any information i don't already know . i'm thinking maybe it's trying to confirm that's a legal copy and jumping through a zillion hoops this one time and might not do it every time after.

i dunno. this version doesn't like my machine, in two separate ways so far, and perhaps others if i could get it past the second issue. and this is a machine that has zero problems running the disk version. so i'm not happy with the d2d version and consider the money lost. i'll be buying a new disk version this weekend i guess /sigh. i'd been hoping a digital version would work, since then i'd never run into the "my drive is being finicky and not acknowledging that it's in there, even tho i can't see scratches" problem.

i do hope you find a solution to your problems Vandell.

Well, I'd personally wait a moment before purchasing another CD version - I'm putting in a ticket at the Direct2Drive website's support section to see if they can do anything about it.

Also, for reference, did you install the patch from the D2D.com website, KMadCandy? I did, and I'm going to try reinstalling it without the patch.

i didn't install the patch, because the version i downloaded was warlords 2.08 already. i didn't notice that at first, and tried to install the patch i downloaded from d2d, but it told me "hey you don't need that, your game already has this patch duh!" it used different wording tho.

i so hope you get it working! if you have time i'd appreciate an update here if you do make progress. my (at least temporary) good news is that my disk drive is behaving today (knock wood) so i am able to play my old version. the power had gone out two nights ago which is what started yesterday's whole fiasco. here's hoping it stays on for the next, i dunno, 23 years or so?

A friend of mine had this problem, and solved it by replacing the .exe with one made for a no-CD crack.

Crack is not allowed in this forum.

Regards,
Arto.

I have the exact problem as the original poster also bought both civ IV and warlords from direct2drive. Has anyone figured out what may be the problem with this because it is very frustrating!

My problem is similar. I have the cd version, and I receive a message saying "there is no cd in the drive "E", when I try to start Warlords. But this only happens if I install the patch. It doesn't happens with Warlords without patches... Any help?

Edited: Btw, the cd is in the drive "E"...