Black Screen Crash at Startup

Ivanho

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 14, 2012
Messages
2
I realize this is an old complaint, but none of the suggestions I could find here or on other forums was helpful. I bought vanilla Civ 5 from Steam this past March, and could not get it to run. I got to the start video, and then to the select game screen, but it ALWAYS crashed at the leader screen indicating that civilizationv.exe had failed and had to close. I couldn't even get the tutorials to run.

I tried:
Verifying integrity of game cache (multiple times)
Re-installing DirectX and VCredist (multiple times)
Re-installing Microsoft Net Framework 4.0
Setting config.ini to EnableGameCoreThreading = 0
Setting UserSettings to SkipIntroVideo = 1

Nothing worked; crash every time.
I gave up and deleted Civ 5.

I upgraded to a new video card, and decided to give Civ 5 a chance. No improvement. I repeated the above steps, and added:

Upgraded to the latest (9/12/12) Nvidia video drivers
Deleting .wmv intro files (resulting in massive crash and the subsequent "verify integrity of game cache" reloaded the .wmv files)

I still crash at the "leader" screen with a error that civilizationv.exe has failed.

I'm at my wits' end. I can't find any other fix, other than to get a new computer, which isn't an option right now.

I've attached a dxdiag and my most recent zipped MDMP file.

Help!?
 

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Yeah, your DxDiag is showing quite a number of potential issues man. It's certainly not definitive by any means but I *very* strongly suspect that your OS is in need of a proper reinstall (including an upgrade to a 64 bit version) which would most likely resolve your issue. However, if you wish to try and debug in it's current state then read on.

Firstly and most importantly, the version of DirectX you have installed is not retail. It's impossible for me to tell how or why you would be running 3rd party DirectX files (which seems likely, other explanations also possible) but you should reinstall the current Microsoft versions unless there is a good reason for them being the way they are. Available here.

Second thing to be aware of are the inherent memory management issues cause by your system setup. 32bit OSes have a maxiumum addressable memory space of 4GB. This includes adressing the generic RAM, vRAM of your GPU and a small amount reserved for system overhead. You have 4GB installed RAM plus 2GB of vRAM and while your system should, in theory, be able to manage this seamlessly it can (and often does) cause memory addressing issues with memory intensive applications which could be happening here. The solution is to upgrade your OS, either to Win XP 64 bit or, much more preferably, to a 64 bit version of Windows 7. You may have to do this if repairing your DirectX installation does not work.

Lastly, and least importantly, your sound drivers are wy out of date. You should update them. It's more than likely not the problem though.
 
Thank you for the response.

I'm a little at a loss how to proceed.

My DirectX installation is from the repeated installations of DirectX in the Civilization V files (as suggested in numerous forum posts.) I also downloaded the file at the link you provided, but upon running it the program announced that "DirectX setup has determined that a newer or equivalent version of DirectX has been installed already. No installation is necessary."

My sound card files are the most recent released by Creative for the Xfi. I have tested those files, and they appear to be operating normally.

As for my WinXp installation, I have no problem running any other game or application; only Civilization V gives me grief. All service packs and recommended updates have been applied, and I never get error messages with any game other than Civilization V.

I was under the impression that Civ V would run under 32bit WinXp. Perhaps I was wrong. I guess I will have to delete the game and wait until I can afford to upgrade to Windows 7.

Unfortunately, reading the posts in this forum, it looks like users running Win7 are having similar problems to those I described.

Oh well...
 
@Petek, I think he is refering to the game crashing when starting a new game (when the civilisation specific background screen is up), not when he is accessing the leader screen ingame itself. This *strongly* suggests a failure to correctly initialise either the rendering engine (DirectX) or one of the 3rd party libraries (.Net 4, C++ Redist 2008).

I wouldn't be inclined to give up just yet. That said you do seem to have done quite a bit of troubleshooting already so it's hard to know where to go next. I really don't think the multiple installations of Civ 5 itself would have installed the non retail versions of DirectX that you have, if anything they would have forced older libraries on top of them, which could be extremely problematic. Is it possible a separate troubleshooting step you took installed these? In any case I think you should run System File Checker to see if that picks up any issues there. Simply open a Command Prompt and run the command "sfc /scannow".

Another step that could be taken would be to either enable LAA (Large Address Aware) for your OS (if not done already) or else disable the LAA switch in the Civ 5 executable itself. You make no mention of having done this so I am assuming it's currently standard. In order to enable the 3GB option you must edit your boot.ini file. Simplest way to do this is:
* Right click My Computer >> Properties >> Advanced
* Under Startup & Recover click Settings. This will open the boot.ini file in Notepad
* Save a copy of your current boot.ini to desktop as a backup.
* Find the line beginning "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)....\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home/Professional" /fastdetect"
Copy this line in it's entirety and paste it directly below itself. Edit this pasted entry to read: "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)....\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home/Professional 3GB" /3GB /fastdetect"
This will enable you to boot your machine in either the standard (2GB) or 3GB modes. Reboot in the 3GB mode and see if the game works.

If not then you could try to disable the LAA switch in the executable image itself. This is normally done with a Hex editor but I have just done a search and found a tool more suitable for the home user. Located here. I've just downloaded and used this myself and at first glance it seems quite excellent.

All of this trouble shooting aside I still think it would be advisable to reinstall your entire system, even if it's simply to replace it with itself. You could also check to see if your licence for XP covers XP 64. IIrc the licence for XP Pro also covers the 64bit version (for example) but it's been quite a few years now since I've had to deal with this personally so I can't be certain.
 
Have you tried to load directX 11?
 
I have been getting the same issue as most concerning the black screen after the intro's. I read a few posting and sort of fixed it for myself (hopefully). The initial problem I had was the play screen was the wrong size so I went into the in-game options and checked "Fullscreen" and that's where my problems started. But basically this is how I hopefully fix my issue:

1, Click 'Start' and type in 'Civ 5' into the search box, a list of files popped up.

2, I clicked on 'See more results' and scrolled down to where it says 'GraphicsSettingsDX9' and double clicked

3, A notepad page popped up and then I scrolled down till I found 'Fullscreen' and change the value from '1' to '0'.

4, Saved the file and re-ran 'Civ 5 shortcut'. Hey presto!!

5, Then reset the screen rez to a better size errr think it was.... '1360x768' well its fits my screen.

Hope this helps and my basic PC specs are.... i5 3.2mhz, 3gb ram, NVidia 315 1gb gpu hdd??
 
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