Black screen crashes

[Demanda-u]

Hello,

I just bought Civilization 1V and everytime I get on this game I get black screens but as far as I can tell, my specs are up to par:

Windows XP w/SP2
Intel (R)
Pentium (R) 4 CPU 3.00 Ghz
3.00 Ghz, 1.00 Gb of Ram
video card: Nvidia 7800 GS 256 Ram
driver: 81.9


I've turned the resolution down to 800x600 and set everything to medium settings with the AA turned off.

Can anyone explain why the game keeps crashing? The game installed fine and gave me approx 3 hours playing last night but today it goes to a black screen within minutes of logging on and then, i have to reboot in order to get back to my desk top. There are no error messages when this happens. I can't play the game anymore until I find a fix

I'd really appreciate any feedback.

 

[crunch]

As far as I know, 1024x768 is the lowest supported resolution (but I might be wrong). Have you installed the latest patch (1.61)? http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/patch/

 

[mosquitooth]

Hi,

I've just the same configuration and just the same problems....anyone here who knows how to fix this?
(I also tried the latest BETA nVidia driver - no solution).

Greetings,

Peter

 

[Demanda-u]

Yeah, I have downloaded and installed the newest patch. I meant that I had lowered the resolution to 800x600 on my nvidia settings which now, I don't think matters because as you'd mentioned the games lowest resolution is 1024. Yesterday I changed a bunch of settings in the configuration .ini file like someone had suggested in another link (screen shots off/set max frames to 20/etc -- up to 6 of his suggestions) and the game worked for about 3 hours but today, it crashed immediately upon loading. I'm myphed that that this game is so unstable.

 

[ainwood]

Well, you certainly shouldn't have any problems meeting the game minimum specs (I play on a 6600 GT and a 6800 with no real problems).

The only issue may be your video drivers - you have 81.9, and the latest version is 91.31. Given that the game needs pixel shader support, maybe you need the newer version (although I would have thought that a 7800 would have had newer drivers than that anyway....)

You can get the latest drivers here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.31.html