Crashing, but only with some leaderheads?

Hi everyone, I'd rather have started posting here on this beautiful board in the tips section, but here I am

I have a very low end machine, with a NVidia GeForce 5600FX which according to this sticky should be basic yet working, and a Pentium4 3GHz, 512 Gb RAM. Obviously, no Vista but Win XP.

I have installed Civ 4 and both the expansions, they are up to date with patches and the installation went fine.
I played the tutorial and a single player game with no problems... yet for some reason the game freezes and crashes, leaving me a "graphic card driver won't respond" every time the leaderhead animation of Napoleon should be played, be it while choosing your civ or when the AI contacts you.
I tried setting the game to work with low graphics, no videos, windowed, with no change.
Now, I find this quite odd since I did not find anything on this issue anywhere!
I did not actually check every single leader, however as far as I have seen, only Napoleon presents this issue.
What should I do? Before ypu tell me to change my pc, is there a way to change Napoleon's video, even with anoter leader's?

Welcome to CFC

please post your dxdiag results file. Is the game patched to date?

Hi Ori, I'm pleased to meet you, thanks for your welcome
I've attached here a dxdiag.txt before a crash, and one after (called dxdiag2.txt).
After the crash, I'm advised to restart the pc since the nvidia driver is not working anymore.
About updates: Civ4 vanilla is updated to the latest, Warlords is updated, only BtS is not up to date, I noticed only now. The crash occurs the same way with BtS and Civ4 vanilla, though.

windows xp is not uptodate (while this likely does not explain the crash - updating to service pack 3 is recommended).
the nvidia driver is - get a new one.
also patch BtS to 3.19 (download it from here).

I see, thanks Ori. I'll try and fix those, I'll come posting here again to report

Thanks again!

I have updated both the drivers and BtS, however I still get a crash when Napoleon should be displayed: the game freezes and instead of that leader there's a black space.
This time tho instead of getting a 'driver not working' alert the computer directly rebooted. Any ideas?
It might me an useless observation of mine, is it normal for the directory leaderheads in the game not to contain a Napoleon folder? All other leaders seem to be there apparently.
Thanks again

is there an error message when it reboots?

No, it just freezed with Napoleon's video missing and black, then rebooted. The message regarding my driver did not appear this time.
As I was asking before, d'you think I actually miss some files (maybe an incomplete installation) ? I'm asking this since the error seems to be very selective, only with this leader. Would it be possible (or, would it make any sense ) to change Napoleon's video, just to give it a try?
Many thanks!

if its a missing file a complete reinstall would likely be the best thing to do - is this just civ4 or an expansion?

It's civ4 with both warlords and BtS. I tried reinstalling them, but I still get this problem, be it playing BtS or civ4 vanilla. Actually, this way I'm restricted to games without that particular leader. Very strange indeed
What should I do about it in your opinion?

did you do all of the below?


install the most recent version of DirectX 9c from Microsoft

then do the following for a clean reinstall:

Uninstall and Reinstall Civ4 Warlords BtS :

Try to follow this order when doing stuff:
Use Control panel to uninstall Beyond the Sword, then Warlords, then Civ4
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\sid meier's civilization 4" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\warlords" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\beyond the sword" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\sid meier's civilization 4" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\warlords" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\beyond the sword" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\local settings\application data\my games\sid meier's civilization 4" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\local settings\application data\my games\warlords" manually
Delete "...\documents and settings\<username>\local settings\application data\my games\beyond the sword" manually
(note: application data is a hidden directory so you need to configure windows explorer to show hidden files, also these directories in application data are sometimes removed by the uninstall routine)
Delete "...\Program Files\InstallShield Installation Information\{CFBCE791-2D53-4FCE-B3FB-D6E01F4112E8}" (Civ4)
Delete "...\Program Files\InstallShield Installation Information\{3E4B349F-10B5-4586-9D99-489A90A8B228}" (Warlords)
Delete "...\Program Files\InstallShield Installation Information\{32E4F0D2-C135-475E-A841-1D59A0D22989}" (BtS)
(note: InstallShield Installation Information is a hidden directory so you need to configure windows explorer to show hidden files).
Install Civ4, immediately patch it to 1.61 (download it fresh from here)
Install Warlords, immediately patch it to 2.08 (download it fresh from here)
Install Beyond the Sword, immediately patch to 3.19 (download it fresh from here).

Done! I re-did all of that as you say, but it doesn't change this whacky strange error!
I tried now changing the leaderheads xml file, now I'm using Louis' graphics for Napoleon as well and it's not crashing anymore. The next step will be using a totally new leaderhead instead of using the same of an existing leader... Still, I don't get the reason of the crash, maybe my computer is so low-end that it's at its limit...

I need to thank you for all your efforts, you really helped me out (and in a really professional way, while you were at it )
Thanks again!!


(I'll be back to haunt you as soon as I get another strange issue )