Civ 4 crashes PC at random

Hi, I'm getting random crashes in the game, there doesn't appear to be any particular pattern to the lock ups and the pc has to be rebooted, see enclosed photo!!!



Does anyone else have this problem? I've updated the graphics, sound and motherboard drivers.

Looks like an overheated video card.

If you have ATI card there is two solution wich working for some players:
1. Download old Catalist 4.12 and install it inseted of latest drivers
or
2. Download latest Catalist 5.12, use low resolution (for me 1280x1024 is working), turn on DEP for all programm (Control Panel->System->Performance-> Data Execution Preventioin turn it for all)

What are the specs of your PC / card / RAM / disc? Need those or eliminating some things is guesswork

Regards
Zy

I have the same problem heathen. Nothing I've tried on these boards seems to help, either. (yes this includes the Zydor harkonnan patch those two guys are spamming on every help thread)

Lahdoz said:

Looks like an overheated video card.

Click to expand...

The specs of the PC are:

ASUS A8V Deluxe
AMD 64 3500+ Akasa AK862 heatsink
1GB RAM
XFX 6800 GT 256mb (AGP)
2 x Seagate SATA 160gb

As Lahdoz says, I've found from the Advanced properties of the graphics card the temperature is getting very hot.

The GPU core temp is around 73c, Ambient Temp is 51, but only after playing the game for 10 minutes the card is hitting around 120!!

I've got two fans at the back of my pc, and two at the front. I've recently played a lot of FIFA2006, NHL2006 and also do a lot of bryce work, this is the first time I've come across these problems.

I'm playing at 1280 x 1024, all detail set to high, anti-aliasing set to 2.

Its not my patch - Harkonnen and a dozen guys on that thread did all the work - its way beyond my level of programming. It is not a fix-it-all nor is it claimed to be so, it is however a fact that in the vast majority of cases it is helping those with memory related problems. Even those who think all's well have discovered that the better memory management has resulted in a far more responsive game, easier to play through, and gets rid of many (not all) irritating hassles. He's done a great job, as all the verification coming in testifies. That thread has had 10,000 hits in 24 hrs, over 43,000 in 4 days.

I assume you have done all the usual like checking fans, cleaning dust of the inside of the box. If you dont get memory related issues concerning frequent CTDs, slow game response, slow turn times etc, its likely the patch will not help you. It is however still worth a go even in those circumstances, its quick and easy to try. Better memory management means less strain on all system components

If it still overheats - and also overheats with other games - then you probably need an additional fan. Other than that over to the Video experts

Regards
Zy

Civ 4 is the only game that's causing the graphics card to overheat. As I said before I've been playing FIFA 06 and NHL 06 which I would have thought would be more graphically intensive without any problem.

I've tried the Harkonnen patch and did spend some time cleaning the inside of my pc, but this hasn't made any difference. Guess I'll have to find a new fan for the graphics card.

heathen666
Well, in old times everyone claimed Unreal1 in software mode to most probably cause overclocked CPU to go down. I found that it was StarCraft... I live with 250Watt power block which is bad with my 9800 Pro but it lives (I have Pentium3 though). BUT! When I made my fix working, so it lived in memory, not in swap files, my HDD had to restart occasionally... so I had to put away 2nd HDD which I was using very rarely.

Neither FarCry, nor Doom3, not anything else caused this... So, civ4 kneeled my power block down, and I guess it is most heat-emissive for video chip as well.

Also, my fix addresses geometry issues, and just geometry allowed to win around 20-40% of memory used by the game... well it counts since geometry processing is more about calculations (as lot of parallel multiplications) than about accessing memory, so it heats up much faster.

sanguis
Well, I am not in a team with Zydor, so I owe him even more for spreading the word I personally started "spamming" forums when I had 3-4 pages of success or almost-success stories. Originally only Memory leak? thread had link to my patch (and some other threads I had replies in).

Sometimes people just PM me and ask to post this in their forums... My fix appeared in the news section by sole will of Thunderfall (CFC site administrator), I didn't even ask to make the thread sticky.

I personally would also call it a "spam" and a reason for those "40k". I would not believe this can happen without any wide advertising (I prefere 'spreading' since it's not commercial fix)... until the day it actually happened to me. People talk and people listen

Another missionary spreading Fixarism is oldStatesman.

Zydor
oldStatesman
Thank you guys!

P.S: I am sorry for this huge offtopic... just Zydor, oldStatesman and everyone else posting that link make a great help which I don't want to be blamed by anyone And again, this fix contains no banners, it's free-of-charge... All we want is making people using it... for the reasons it fixes, nothing else. I don't care if Firaxis buys it from me or not. It will be nice bonus for my efforts, but it wasn't original goal.

Harky

The thanks are all due to you and all the guys on that thread that did such a tremendous job, and expended so much of their time in a 4 week period sorting it out..

I am trying to spot people with problems this fixes, and prevent what I almost did - return the DVD and give the finger to Civ for good after being a Civ Player for years - I was so angry at the abysmal coding. Your patch came along in time to prevent my ditching it all, at the time it was literally inside an envelope on the hall table to post in the morning

Its a crying shame to see people in large numbers desert the Civ Series over this (there is little doubt that is happening) when your patch could keep them going. However many have not used Forums before as such and are unaware of the patch - unless someone tells them ...

Regards
Zy

That crash turns out to be the video card overheating on my PC. I had checked it phsyically for dust, and its pretty clean. It's never had problems before, but after underclocking Core and Memory Mhz the game plays great.

I'm having the EXACT same problem. I decided to hook up the air compressor today and I cleaned out the inside of my entire computer case but the game is still locking up with a white / pink / blue checkerboard pattern. I will try underclocking my video card (I have all settings at low anyways and the game is running great [after moving down to standard size / 9 civs])

P.S. - System Specs:
P4 2.53 ghz
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (128 MB RAM)
512 MB PC1066 RDRAM
120 GB Western Digital HD
Asus P4-T533-C

sanguis, just grab an old 80mm fan, plug in and point it at the vga card, if it's a passive card it will make the world of difference. Even if it's a fan-cooled it should help. I used to have an FX5200 passive, and it would get scalding hot - once it had a bit of air it was just warm-hot.

This must be a driver or Civ4 problem.

I too get the exact same problem, sometimes not for hours, sometimes every 10 minutes. The problem totally went away for me for a week when the 1.09 patch came out, but in the last week it's crashing again very often.

My PC is an Athlon 3200+, 2GB memory, GF6800GT, running 80.95 WHQL drivers

The annoying thing is, I can play other graphically intensive games (BF2, CS:source, X3) all day long without any problems, it's something particular to Civ4. I returned my CPU and GFX card to default clock frequencies (was a tiny bit overclocked before), and it's still happening - what's more neither my temperature alarms on my CPU or Graphics card are warning my before it happens (I know from last summer that I'll start to hear beeping before my card overheats and crashes my system).

I'll try doing what the previous poster suggested, and underclock, but I still don't think it's an issue with my PC, due to the fact that no other app or game gives me any problems

:edit:

I'm also running a nice Antec 430w power supply, and I run through a UPS, so it's definately not power related

I've now tried the Zydor harkonnan patch and reducing the graphics settings to low and 1024 x 768 and the game is still causing the graphics card to overheat.

I'm running the latest (81.95) drivers on my pc, I've had a look through the properties of the graphics card and can't see how to underclock it. The graphics card is a XFX 6800GT 256mb, anyone got any ideas on how to do this?

Please - dont detract from Harky's work which you did unintentionally. Harkonnen and a lot of guys from that thread did the work, I am just a convert who has programming skills positioned somewhere in the pre-IceAge Era by comparison.

Its Harkonnen's patch, and the result of many many sleepness nights and damned hard work on his part and his band of knowledgable enthusiasts on that thread over a 4 week period that made it possible.

Most definitely not me ....

Worth nipping over to that thread and asking there, they may well have a suggestion for you

Regards
Zy

Well using RivaTuner, I underclocked both the memory and core clock on my video card to about 55 mhz under on each setting and it seems to have fixed the problem, as I was able to play for a couple of hours last night instead of 10 minutes. That being said though it is still possible that the game just decides to crash on me in 10 minutes today. Does anybody else find it completely ridiculous that Civ IV is the only game where this happens to them? It's definitely a problem with the game and not our systems. Civ IV has got to be the buggiest game ever released...

SuprVgeta
Actually it uses GPU (geometry processing unit) as much as StarCraft used CPU in its time (and noone noted that those days).

My card has an OEM fan on it, it should be plenty cool. It's never crashed in other games, either. Civ 4 seems weird. Anyway, I went from 250 Core/ 446 Memory Mhz down to 192 Core / 343 memory. When I'd tried 225/400 before, it still crashed on me; after trying many other things I went back for more underclocking and it worked.

I managed to play for 4 hours straight last night without crashing. All I did was turn the resolution down to 1024x768 and turned all graphics options to medium.

Game looks ugly as hell now, but at least it's working. I'm not underclocking my GPU just to play one game - a game that seems to run smooth as silk at maxed graphics settings up until my screen goes psychodelic on me and crashes the system.

There is still something wrong if Civ4 is trying to somehow push my GFX card beyond what it can handle. I mean I've got a Leadtek 6800GT with a half kilo of copper, and a good fan on it, it should not be overheating at standard frequencies (nor does it in any other game).

Is everyone else who has this exact problem running a 6800GT? I think everyone who's posted their graphics card details thus far has one. Maybe that's part of the problem

Civ4 is such a good game, that I can still tolerate playing it in ugly mode, but I really hope this gets investigated and addressed in a Civ4 or driver update.