CTD after 30 minutes - always

[poor@vail.net]

This happened before the patch, and after. Top of the line Dell machine with 1 gig of RAM, an ATI 9800XT and all drivers and systems up to date. I experimented by running the game, loading a save, and just left the computer alone. Sure enough, at about the half hour mark it froze. Screen goes black and hard boot is the only recovery. Then I tried again, without loading a save, and it ran for hours without a problem, so....

It's apparently a memory problem of some sort once the game is running, right?

[spa]

CTD seems to be a very common issue with Civ4 right now (cruise over to the tech support forum and you'll see many many posts and threads about this issue). It seems to be especially bad for most people in the late game when the map fills up with units and cities. Hopefully the problem will be addressed in the next patch. Some people have found some things that seem to have helped on their machines, but their is is no fix all out there and many of the fixes just alleviate the problem rather than solving it. In my situation, I have a late game that I can only play for two or three turns before it crashes badly enough to force me to restart the computer. So I generally play two or three turns at the end of the day and then just shut the computer off for the night and go to bed. Quite annoying, but better than nothing. My wait for the next patch won't be so bad though as I'm on holiday for December and out of town. I'm hoping that when I get back things will be fixed up. In any case, this is just another shortsighted early release. There is no other business out there, except for maybe the banks, that has such comtemptous attitudes towards their customers. Anyway, I feel your pain.

[Underseer]

Just trying to offer solutions. Please don't be offended.

Do you have a fixed swap file size, or does Windows adjust the swap file size during or after a crash? The few times I've crashed, I noticed the little yellow "!" icon in my system tray announcing that Windows was increasing the swap file size and that any further virtual memory requests would be denied or something like that.

Also, do you have a larger power supply you can swap with your current one just to test things out? It never hurts to check.

[just_z00t]

I have a save game for a standard size map in modern era and it crashes on every load. I have tried everything suggested to help on this forum to help fix the CTD problem and still I cant play full game of Civ on any map size standard to huge without a CTD. I have been getting the same error on my save game everytime I load it before I can finsh playing one round and the error says.

"The required data was not placed into memory because of a I/0 status error of 0xc000009a"

That memory range belongs to a Geforce4 TI 4200 and it might not be the latest and greatest card it damn well is good enough for a game like Civ and never gives me problems on other games.

As a side note I would like to say that this game is a prime example why piracy is not all bad because I would be one pissed off guy if I spent $50 on this incomplete BS! but I would be more than happy to buy it and play online when/if its patched up to playable version. Try before you buy!

[Moepheus]

I have noticed that CIV4 works better on older computers than it does on the top of the range ones, and you are about 1 of a few hundred who has CTD problems.

I'll agree with spa on this one, look around the forums because as I've already said alot of people have got problems like yours, maybe you will find the answer to your problem from one of the other posts.

[WasAGuest]

"As a side note I would like to say that this game is a prime example why piracy is not all bad because I would be one pissed off guy if I spent $50 on this incomplete BS!"

As a thought on that; when I tested a no-cd option, I had no CTDs through an entire game. When I "un-fixed" the game, CTD come back. I think it has something to do with the copy protection being used. It runs in memory at all times.

This is just a thought, but FEAR was issued a hotfix from SecureROM due to copy protection problems. Quake IV disabled the CD checking in it's exe with it's patch as the SafeDisk was causing problems. Just a guess, but it seems more and more games released with copy protection are not running for everyone -- which pushes the idea of pirating as it did in the post above.

Publishers might consider that when spending money on buggy protection software that 1) is cracked in a matter of days 2) runs the price of games up even more.

Just my 2 cents.

PS. I do not like using cracks/hacks or fixes for my games. I do not enjoy looking or searching for ways to make a purchased game work. It should work out of box or it should be returnable. The EULA should be made to be read after the game is installed and run (without crashes), or a disclaimer should be added to the EULA stating that if the software doesn't work, it can be returned for a full refund within 10 working days.