Crash on save game load

I played Civ3 for about a week, doing nothing abnormal...except for losing to the Germans which I annihilated so many times in Civ1.

Yesterday I got an error after a sound repeated...over and over:

CIVILIZATION3 caused an invalid page fault in
module SOUND.DLL at 0197:0170862f.
Registers:
EAX=00000001 CS=0197 EIP=0170862f EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00000001 SS=019f ESP=00ab9a6c EBP=07478f88
ECX=00000001 DS=019f ESI=00000000 FS=0ca7
EDX=01e44880 ES=019f EDI=00ab9a9f GS=1236
Bytes at CS:EIP:
f3 a4 8b 4a 20 5f 03 c8 5e 89 4a 20 5b c2 10 00
Stack dump:
00000000 08180098 00000000 26f01105 01e44880 00ab9a9f 00000001 00000000 0818aac8 08180098 07478f88 00000000 00000000 00000000 ffffffff 00000000

Now, whenever I try to load that saved game, I get the same error or one that has a lot of %1.50z's in it or something around that range. I tried starting a new game, but eventually got the same error and the game still will not load.

Also, attempting to start a new game today, I was greeted with a pop-up "Unable to allocate draw-buffer; terminating program." headed by the title CIVILIZATION 3 after the 1-100% loading bar. Not fun.

At this point I'm pretty much desperate, but if some background information is needed, I'll gladly give it. I'm running Windows 98 (Second Edition I think) with a decent amount of RAM and harddrive space. I have all the DirectX updates and have exceding amounts of the system specs on the box.

And I'm very sorry if this question is already answered in another post, but I would like some justification and a solution if anyone knows anything about this. Thanks a lot.

I always get the problems that no one else has...I wish my screen would split into 4...

I have this same problem where I play the game for a while and then at some point the game crashes. I try to load the game but it then again crashes at the exact same point. These games have lasted a long time so it isn't simple little problems at start up but arise long into the game and I have no clue why there is a problem. I don't know what anyone could say to help, hopefully any future patch will fix bugs, espeically speed up the game a lot, but I just wanted post this message so you know your aren't alone and I bet other people have this problem too.

You are not alone NO PANIC i won´t sing

I have the same problem as npburg. Between 1500 AD and 1600 AD the game stops and you can only kill the process by the Taskmanager. I try it with XP and W2K and got the same results. I think it allways happens when i open the Cityview and try by rightclick to upgrade/fortify my troups.

Hope the patch will fix our problems.

:crazyeyes if anyone can fix the problems donn´t be shy and wrote your idea :crazyeyes