At my wits end - PLEASE HELP

[al_thor]

I have gone round and round with this damned game - installing/un-installing/crashing during install/crashing during play/etc.

History:
Installed game.
Worked GREAT for almost 2 days.
Crashing begins in earnest.
Try the "fixes" (unpack Art0, delete Cache, install latest ATI drivers).
Un-install/re-install (MANY crashes now during Install).
Finally get it installed.
None of that works.
Game either crashes on start or after a few minutes of play.

Remove my Radeon 9200 SE and replace with my son's Nvidia FX 5600XT.
Install latest Nvidia drivers.
Try the game. Crashes on start. No messages, just hard system crash to re-boot.
Un-install game.
Now I can't get it re-installed.
It either crashes as soon as I put in the install cd or as soon as I double-click on the Install.exe
Sometimes it gets to the second CD and then crashes when about 80-90% complete. No messages, just re-boot.

My system:
P4 2.4
1G Memory
80G Seagate
Asus P4PE Motherboard.
Nvidia FX 5600 XT.
Windos XP SP2

Are there messages in some log somewhere?

BTW - I have also have cleared the Windows\Temp file and deleted the IsProBE.tlb from the C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime directory between install attempts.
At this point, I'm sitting untouched after a crash during install (90%) completed. If I put the CD in, it comes up with PLAY. I close that, Explore the CD, double-click on Install.exe and CRASH.

I just have no idea what to do. I'd like to see if that damned thing will run with the 5600 card.

Is there somewhere I can look for messages about the crashing during install?

 

[NinjaCool]

Uhhh seems you have some very strange problems going on :/ did you check for viruses? also do a system scan and possible to get back to installing the actual game you can do a system restore to restore pc state to a date prior to when the install problem accured.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/system_restore.htm

Also might be a good idea to use one of those "driver nukers" which erases all files from previous/new updates for both your ati and nvidia cards, then reinstalling the newest drivers available.

ATI driver removal:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=293

Removes drivers from various gfx cards:
http://www.drivercleaner.net/

 

[al_thor]

I checked my fragmentation percentage, and given how much trouble this game has caused, I wasn't too surprised to find it high (very high). I did a defrag and got the game loaded.

I was out of time however, so I could not start it up to see if it ran. I'm not getting my hopes up.

Virus scan was clean (no surprise either as I try to be very fastidious in this regard.)

 

[maartena]

Now I can't get it re-installed.
It either crashes as soon as I put in the install cd or as soon as I double-click on the Install.exe
Sometimes it gets to the second CD and then crashes when about 80-90% complete. No messages, just re-boot.

This sounds like there are some other issues going on besides Civ4. If the system won't even recognize the original CD or the software on it anymore, I would seriously suspect something tampered with your system.

It could be nasty adware that takes up resources, it could be a virus, it could be a hardware problem, but I don't believe that this is specifically Civ 4 related.

Can you use any other install CD's of games you may have? Can you copy the contents of the Civ 4 CD's to the harddrive without using the install program?

Civ 4 installs a good 4,500 files to the Civ 4 folder, it could be your system is choking on it somehow.....

Do a memory check also from a boot-floppy disk.

 

[al_thor]

Okay, as noted above, after doing a de-frag, I got it to install, but had no time to try it out.
Well, I have the time now. All the time in the world. Because guess what? THE DAMNED GAME WON'T START.

Has anyone seen this error before? Any suggestions/help is MOST appreciated!!