A seriously disturbing problem

[random player]

So now I join the countless poor souls seeking help on the internet with the cursed game Civ4. I have had it working, and I have enjoyed myself playin it, though now...
I am past the "failed to initialize renderer problem", I did fix that when I got my ATi Radeon X800XL 256mb, and it worked just fine. The system reqs has never been a problem. After abusing my HD for over a year, I decided the time was right for a format. The format went fine and everything went back to normal. But then I installed Civ4 on my now clean and fast HD. It crashes at the start without giving me the failed to init... error. I rush to these forums and download the latest patch and after that the latest Radeon drivers. Hopefully I turn on the game again. Same thing. So now I need help.
I've checked the error report info and it says this:


What on earth does that mean?!
Would a kind soul be so ehrm.. kind and help me?

 

[tinribs]

This is a problem with SafeDisc - the copy protection method used by Civ 4. It basically means that something is running in the background (or even only installed) that safedisc doesn't like. More than that I can't tell you but if you google for the filename giving the error you should get loads of hits.

Try uninstalling any CD burning software or protection beating software like alcohol or Nero.....

That's about it

Tinribs

 

[auldian]

Be sure you deleted your pre-patch cache. C:\Documents and Settings\<Logon ID>\Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\cache is the default location for it (not in My Documents).

I saw this error too and resolved it by updating all drivers, using the December DirectX 9.0c (now February's), and doing a clean game install and patch.

Let us know if you get it resolved.

 

[darkedone02]

check on your program files to see if you still have the Civ 4 directory in there, if you need to install the game, remove that. IMO it will help stop causing some installation problems.