Must unload the debugger

Hi, I have been playing civ 4 on this computer since I bought it back in May. I have Vista. All of a sudden, I get a message saying "must unload the debugger." The only applications i have installed on this machine are civ 4, itunes, and mozilla ohter than the standard things that come with vista. i am thinking it is something in the service pack? I tried doing what microsoft support says to but nothing worked. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling and that did not work...


*edit. I tried installing as admin, this also did not work.

welcome to cfc

check this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;812759

I have been getting the same problems on a new install of vista with Civ4 games installed through right click>run as admin install. I looked at was in the link above and the windows updates on my computer were all atleast above KB929xxx while MS said to look for KB812759 which I don't have. I also tried running them on a clean boot as suggested and still got the debug message. Any help would be much appreciated, I haven't played in almost a week and am going through serious withdrawals, lol.

There's another thread on this which indicates that (at least sometimes) none of the suggested fixes work for Vista.

Some people on other forums claim to have fixed it by falling back to an older graphics card or using older graphics card drivers from their manufacturer. I have a laptop so I can't change the card, and the drivers are Microsoft ones.

Can't see what to do except contact Microsoft for support. My feeling is that this is down to a recent Microsoft update - Civ IV was working fine a few weeks ago and I haven't changed anything on my system since.

I'd also blame one of the recent windows updates - but there has to be a workaround. Are all other programs (including anti virus software) stopped when trying this?

Well, I have narrowed it down to a few programs. It isn't the nVidia drivers. So, anyone who is getting this problem you shouln't have to revert back to an older 8 series driver. Now, nVidia Physx driver is another story. Other than that, I think it may be either Microsoft Security Essentials, or ThreatFire. I'll post again later when I have run some more tests.

ori said:

I'd also blame one of the recent windows updates - but there has to be a workaround. Are all other programs (including anti virus software) stopped when trying this?

Click to expand...

I don't think it's an update caused problem. I tested it on my Vista laptop, which is fully updated and current, without issue. Then I installed Civ on both of my partner's Intel machines, and her AMD laptop. All of these run Vista x32 or x64, and all of the updates are current. Again, no issues, and no "debugger" messages.

That's four Vista machines without the issue, and my Win 7 machine doesn't do it either. I dual boot, so I tried it in XP as well. Still no debugger problem.

Unless there is some strange hardware in common, I think we can rule out a service pack or update cause for this. The only common thing between her machines and mine, is that the video cards are all Radeons.

the reason I blame Microsoft (apart from it being true more often than not ) is that it started to do this suddenly for multiple people who had been running the game before - so something changed for multiple people at once - and windows update is the most likely culprit there. Of course it needs to something in addition to this that they have in common - or everyone would have the problem....

Well, my system is now finally up to date, only took just under a week to go from initial release cd software to current on updates. I have been running Civ4 just fine since I started posting about what I did to fix it. I am beginning to think that it has to do with what programs are running in the background when you install the game. Perhaps the authentication program in Civ4 thinks certain security programs or possibly other programs are trying to disable it. I don't know, just a thought.

ori said:

the reason I blame Microsoft (apart from it being true more often than not )

Click to expand...

Score one for Ori.

is that it started to do this suddenly for multiple people who had been running the game before - so something changed for multiple people at once - and windows update is the most likely culprit there. Of course it needs to something in addition to this that they have in common - or everyone would have the problem....

Click to expand...

I would agree. I'm puzzled by this. Apart from our laptops, our machines are all self built, and not OEM models, and our copies of Vista, XP, and 7 are all generic, and not tied to a particular manufacturer's hardware.

I mentioned this to the IT fellows at work and they asked if we were running Visual Studio, or one of the C run-time packages needed for some programs. That was their best guess. Sadly, I don't have my usual resources for really delving into this sort of thing anymore, but I'll keep looking.