Black screen crash

[jazzilyn]

Hi All,
Ok first Civ 4 worked perfectly fine until the last patch. I had never even crashed until then and had logged many hours of play. Lately it has been doing this random crash during game play where the screen goes comepletely black except for the mouse pointer, with music still playing in background Then I get the Civ 4 has encountered an error and needs to close and do I want to send an error repot to Microsoft. It then shuts down to the desktop after I choose to send or not send.

Now these crashes are completely random--it does not matter what is happening in game. And they are happening about once every 30 mins in Single player mode (I don't do Multiplayer). I have tried playing on the lowest graphics settings with everything tirned off in the background, but it still crashes. I followed many suggestions from these forums but it is still crashing. Anyhow any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[FenrysWulf]

It sounds pretty similar to my own problem, with the only exception that after mine crashes the graphics settings are really, really low and can't be changed. Also, mine only happens in the latter stages of the game. I posted on this a few days ago and no one has really commented on it, so don't expect to learn anything useful because I don't think anyone knows.

 

[Zydor]

Jazzilyn

Your main issue is the GeForce FX Go5200, and the fact that it has only 64Mb RAM space. The game will not run properly on that card. You will need to get a mid range card upgrade in the long run

Meanwhile,
- load the latest driver set - yours are 2004
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_81.98.html

- Reduce as much as possible the load on the graphics which is your weak(est) spot. Reduce textures in the menu, go to low resolution, stop background programmes via MSconfig etc, anything to reduce the load on your graphics and your low cpu (you are only just inside the cpu requirements for the game). Numerous posts on this aspect in the first 2 pages of the forum - lots of unsupported or low end hardware has surfaced post V1.52

Your problem is the FX Go5200 and low cpu at 1.7Mhz

Give the above a go in terms of tuning the PC - but its time to think about a PC upgrade if the dosh is there ...

Regards
Zy

 

[jazzilyn]

Thanks Zy, but this is the problem.. number one according to several posts I am not the only one with this puter.. is a laptop that has been playing the game just fine until the patch. Its impossible to upgrade the video card, and NVidia doesn't provide support for this card in the way of drivers. Like I said I played for a month straight without one crash of any kind. And then the patch came and bam crash city. According to these forums there are lots of us Toshiba satellite m35 peeps playing this game, and several with Centrino 1.7ghz and no problems. Also, I play EQ2 and EQ1 and have absolutley NO graphics problems. I am just wondering what happened in the patch that has made the game suddenly unplayable for me.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Zydor]

Its the card

V1.52 placed more graphics work on the Video card - the reason being to free up more system RAM for low end users. That change brought to the surface lots of unsupported hardware without Video cards, or low end hardware such as yours.

The only thing you can do is to reduce the load as indicated above. There is an ini switch that was inserted that reverses some of the changes in loading on Video RAM. Checkthat "memsaver" is set at 0 (firgure 0, not letter O)
C:\Documents and Settings\New User\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini

Regards
Zydor

 

[Neon Deon]

ok I had a look at the m35 download page for drivers.

There are about 8 different m35s.

Most of them that i looked at showed an ati mobility chip.

Yet your diag shows an nvidia go5200.

Did you get a different mobile card installed?

If not could you verifey the entire model number.

 

[jazzilyn]

Sure, my laptop is a Toshiba M35 S456. The 1.7 Centrino functions as well as a 2.8 P4. At least it does in every other game I play, according to several test sites I have checked out. I just loaded up Call of Duty2 last week and have been playing it perfectly fine, and with my nvidia ge force go 5200 vcard. When I bought this system 18 months ago it was top of the line and cost like 3k. Sad isn't it. I am wondering if bumping my Ram would help. Although my processor burn isn't really bad with Civ 4. Liuke I said these crashes are random. And I did figure out that they only happen when I choose something.. like a technology to research, etc. Strange.
Anyhow Thanks alot

 

[jazzilyn]

ok I checked the memsaver thing and it was already set to 0. Something strange the crashes are happening more and more frequently the more I try to play Civ 4. Like now its every 3-5 minutes. When it started after the patch it was only like once in awhile after like a couple hours. I have no idea if this will help but im gonna post my ini file info . If anyone sees a setting that could be causing this let me know. I also reupdated my Vid drivers to omega ones from last year. But it didnt change the crashing.
Thanks alot.

 

[Neon Deon]

Your sound driver is old.

Try toshibas latest sound driver.

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...ineID=ccceaddgjmjejdgcgfkceghdgngdgnn.0&ct=DL

 

[jazzilyn]

Ok Updated sound card too. What I find wierd is this.. If it was simply that my video card wasn't good enough wouldnt I be getting graphics errors or something? The sound has always been beautiful and no problems. Also that link didn't work for my sound driver but I updated via Toshibas site. I have tried playing from low to high quality and it makes no difference.. still random crashes. Could this be a memory leak or something>?
When I am in game I have beautiful graphics with no errors.. video is great.. I have no lag or choppiness and everything goes along fine.. no slowdown or anything and then bam black screen and Civ has to close. I am going to try logging and then I will post here and hopefully that will be of some help.
Thanks

 

[Neon Deon]

Sound and graphics compete for bus time.
If they dont skip together right either one can cuase a program to crash.
If one takes up more time than the other than you can get choppy graphics cuase sound could be hogging the bus or messed up sound cuase graphics could have too much time. Or it could be simple. graphics anomolies lead to a graphics problem and sound problems lead to a sound problem. The variables when dealing with large amounts of software/hardware combinations can make for a nightmarish path for troubleshooting.

 

[jajohns8]

Hi All,
Ok first Civ 4 worked perfectly fine until the last patch. I had never even crashed until then and had logged many hours of play. Lately it has been doing this random crash during game play where the screen goes comepletely black except for the mouse pointer, with music still playing in background Then I get the Civ 4 has encountered an error and needs to close and do I want to send an error repot to Microsoft. It then shuts down to the desktop after I choose to send or not send.

Now these crashes are completely random--it does not matter what is happening in game. And they are happening about once every 30 mins in Single player mode (I don't do Multiplayer). I have tried playing on the lowest graphics settings with everything tirned off in the background, but it still crashes. I followed many suggestions from these forums but it is still crashing. Anyhow any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

EXACT same symptoms here. Happened last on a huge map with 7 civs around 1200 AD.

 

[jajohns8]

guess i cant add my dxdiag. i attached it in another forum......

 

[FenrysWulf]

Since I am having the same problem as you, you may have noticed the following: Mine always crashes when I am scrolling, either when I am trying to move the map to tell a unit where to go or at the beginning of a turn where the game is jumping from city to city looking for building orders. Something about moving the map around quickly is causing the crash. I'm not sure what that tells us.

 

[Hawkster]

I don't know if this wil help but I was having exaclty the same problem (black screen/cursor/send error report) but in my case it was always at the same point in a saved game. I tried various things but in the end uninstalled civ4 then reinstalled it then installed pacth 1.52 and now I can play fine - maybe worth a try if nothing else works.