1.61 still crashing on Inspiron 8600

[gadams]

I've been an addicted Civ4 player since it came out. Unfortunately, since installing the 1.61 patch, it has been crashing on me. I'm a pretty good troubleshooter, but can't pinpoint anything that is making it crash. I am sometimes able to play full games (on a standard sized world) with no problem. Yet other times, the game will always crash about 5 minutes into playing. Interestingly, I was playing last night with no problem. When I loaded the game today, it crashes repeatedly.

Here are my system specs:
- Dell Inpiron 8600 w/ Centrino 1.5 GHz, 1GB RAM, 2.5GB Virtual Mem
- Radeon Mobility 9600 Pro w/ 128MB RAM (no monitor; using the laptop screen)

Troubleshooting I have tried:
- Updated every driver; tried the Omega video drivers (no driver seemed to affect the crashing problem)
- overall, my computer was happiest with the latest drivers offered to me from the MS Update website (6.14.10.6525)
- Tried many different graphics settings
- Reinstalled Windows & ensured it is up-to-date
- Ensured I'm at the latest motherboard and video card BIOSs
- Updated msmxl3 to SP5
- cleared the Civ4 cache, often
- stopped non-essential services
- ran dxdiag, which seems fine
- tried to Install Catalyst 4.10, but it wouldn't allow me (didn't have the right hardware...)
- tried turning down hardware acceleration, which didn't have pleasant results

I thought I fixed it by ensuring that I reboot before playing. But even that isn't working today.

Any insight anyone could offer on this problem would be great.
Thanks!

 

[crunch]

Could it be overheating perhaps?

 

[gadams]

Unfortunately, no. I left the computer off for some time and tried again. No dice. Other troubleshooting that I did that's worth mentioning:
- Ran a full test of the memory
- Ran a full test of the HDD
Both came back clean. Sad to say, but at this point, I've given up. There's only so much troubleshooting I can do without pulling my hair out.

 

[eric_]

Wow...I'm glad I saw this. I've been considering buying a video card upgrade for my 8600 so I can play Civ. It's VERY expensive and it was already unlikely I'd do it...now I'm almost 100% opposed.

I so wish I had just gotten the 64MB card instead of 32MB...but this was originally just going to be dedicated to recording, so video was no concern at the time. C'est la vie. It's crazy that a game like CivIV requires 64 MB, whereas games like Star Wars Battlefront are OK with 32.

 

[gadams]

FWIW, I think it is my hard drive that is causing the problem. I'm getting consistant errors when I do a scandisk /f. But when I run a full diag on the HDD, it comes back clean. Dell tells me there is no problem and Take2 tells me to come back to them when I no longer get HDD errors. Grrr...

 

[eric_]

Interesting. At the very least this has me thinking I'll get the 64 MB card instead of the 128 so I save $100+. Your thread title implies that the game worked prior to 1.61, is that correct? If so, it'd still be worth it. I don't necessarily need the latest patch as I'll probably never play online from my laptop.

 

[crunch]

Try lowering screen resolution and playing in a window. Windowed mode seems more stable to me.
Also clamp max frame rate (ini file option) to 60 (which is probably the maximum for your display anyway).

 

[gadams]

For the sake of the thread, I'll fill you in on the conclusion:

Neither Civ nor the patch had ANYTHING to do with my problems. Turns out I had some bad memory and possibly a bad hard drive (which is getting replaced tonight). So Civ crashing was merely a symptom, not a cause.

Happy gaming.