Civ IV Keeps Crashing

B

BryanAJParry

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 24, 2009
Messages
12
Hi there, guys,

I'm new here, but I've been a long-time fan of Civ. I went off games for a few years, but have recently got back into gaming. Hence I only just bought Civ IV.

Anyway, I have a problem.

Civ IV runs smooth, it starts up fine, and I can browse the civilopedia (before the start of a game) for hours on end with no trouble. However, as soon as I start a game (including the tutorial), after a varying period of time -- never more than maybe 15 minutes -- the game crashes my PC, freezing the screen and requiring me to restart.

Now, I'm not sure why this is. I hope someone can help me out and let me know what I need to do to resolve this. I mean, if I couldn't play the game at all, ok, no problem, but actually playing it for a few turns and then having it crash-- the torment of tantalus, or what??

Anyway, my processor and video card specs are:

Intel Pentium Dual
ATI RadeonX1650 series, 512MB memory E2160 @ 1.8 GHz 3GHz 2GB of RAM


Now, bear in mine that I am a complete dunce when it comes to computers, so it could be something very basic I'm overlooking.


I hope someone can help me. I desperately want to play this game (for more than a quarter of an hour!).

:)
 
ori said:
welcome to cfc :band:

please post your dxdiag results file.
Click to expand...

Hi there, Ori. There's quite a lot of information in the file; which bits do you need to look at specifically? :crazyeye:


Also, maybe this is useful :confused: :

I re-installed the game and mucked around online trying to find new drivers. The results were promising; last night I played Civ IV for around 2 hours in two separate stints with no problems. However, today, it's gone back to freezing my PC after a few minutes. Maybe I just got "lucky" last night...
 
For what it's worth, Ori,

DirectDraw Acceleration & Direct3D Acceleration were successful on all tests.

Test Direct Sound was successful on all counts, too.

Test Direct Music was successful.

IS there any other information you need?
 
ori said:
:hmm:
when it crashes is there an error message?
Click to expand...

Not at all. The whole thing just freezes, and it's impossible to ctrl-alt-del out of it or anything. My only option is to restart the PC.

It's all weird cos this computer doesn't have any problems with anything else whatsoever, only Civ IV.

:confused:
 
:hmm:
the only thing in the dxdiag results is that your windows xp is not updated to service pack 3 but that should not make a difference- there might be a newer graphics driver out there though so that might be worth a shot...
did you try looking in the windows event manager for any errors?
 
ori said:
:hmm:
the only thing in the dxdiag results is that your windows xp is not updated to service pack 3 but that should not make a difference- there might be a newer graphics driver out there though so that might be worth a shot...
did you try looking in the windows event manager for any errors?
Click to expand...

Hi there, Ori.

I don't actually even know what the events manager is, unless it's the task manager; but I sure as hell don't know how to check if there's an error in there. :blush: How do I do that?

Also, are there any drivers you'd particularly recommend given my graphics card etc?

:)
 
ori said:
drivers: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownlo...px?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.10&lang=English
event manager: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427
most interesting is the applications log - make a note of the time when it freezes - then look in the logs for any errors occurring at about that time...
Click to expand...

Hi Ori,

If it helps, I've posted this to another forum, and here's the discussion there. He seems to be pretty puzzled too.

http://www.1bcciv.com/Topic2274534-81-1.aspx?Update=1

I used that page before for drivers, I believe, and I think I should be alrigth on that front. :confused:

I'll look into the applications log and get back to you when I've got something.

Cheers, Ori,

Bryan :)
 
:hmm:
your drivers are dated 4/09 - the one I posted is 8/09 - usually this should include a driver that is slightly newer than your currently installed one...
you are right that you might want to contact take2 tech support - though mileage varies with them :sad:
 
Hmm, according to the Event Viewer, every time it crashes, ATI Smart, and 5/6 seconds afterwards, SecurityCenter start up.

So, I exited ATI Smart and SecurityCenter, and guess what, the game played this time for about 40 minutes. But then, strangely enough, the game crashed... and the Event Viewer says at the same time ATI Smart and SecurityCenter were activated!!

We seem to have our problem here. However, why would these two programs fire up when I had already exited them? How can I stop them starting? Any ideas, Ori? Anyone else :???
 
:hmm:
my hunch is that for some reason or other the graphics driver stops working and that the ATI program tries to restart it - but pinpointing that might be hard.
you could try downloading the graphics driver from the above link - then uninstall the current driver and then install the one listed there - though I am not sure whether this will help or not. Otherwise: maybe someone else knows something :dunno:
 
Well, I've been AWOL, but now I'm back. I just now submitted a question to the Take 2 tech people, so fingers crossed... :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Z
Problem with Civ4 crashing on bigmaps.
Replies
7
Views
387
s.bernbaum
s.bernbaum
B
Civ IV sound issue
Replies
0
Views
696
Brackadee_Brackadoo
B
H
Civilization IV and V on Windows II
Replies
5
Views
5K
coolhandluke11
coolhandluke11
E
[BTS] CIV IV BTS using less than 0.1% of CPU capacity - unplayable
Replies
0
Views
744
Escruidin
E
J
Technical Difficulties
Replies
2
Views
581
s.bernbaum
s.bernbaum
Back
Top Bottom