Blue Screen and Computer Reboots

[Scorpius_Ogre]

Hello all,

When I attempt to play Civilization 4, it completly reboots my computer. I see a blue screen for about 1 second (or less) and my computer reboots. I have only been able to get into the game 5 or 6 times. And thats after retrying 10-12 times each time I want to play.

And when I finally get into the game... there are all kinds of wierd graphical bugs... man... this sucks! I updated to the latest patch (1.09) and it still crashes!

My computer is perfectly fine... THIS game Civ-4 is severely bugged. I have never played a game with this many glitches...

I have the following hardware:

AMD 64 3800
1 Gigabyte DDR-400 RAM (Dual channel)
MSI 6600GT graphics card
Sound Blaster Live 24 Bit Sound
MSI Neo-4 Motherboard
Seagate 10,000 RPM Cheetah drive

All of my hardware is top-notch. I have all of the latest drivers installed.

I have played the following games on this machine:
Far Cry
Quake 4
Doom 3
Rome - Total War
Dungeon Siege 2
Unreal Tournament 2004
Tons of others... I dont feel like typing them all

Anyway... ALL of those games play just fine. Only this piece of crap by Firaxis crashes. Man... am I the only one having these problems? Where can I get support? Can anyone here help me? And... can I get a refund for this game if I cant get it to work? I called the retailer... and they told me they wont accept software that had been opened back.

Anyway... im pissed... I payed money for this game and its got so many bugs it dont even run on my machine.

I want one of the following things to happen:

1.) I want this game to run properly on my computer.
OR
2.) I want a refund for the money I paid for this game title.

Is that asking for much?

 

[Scorpius_Ogre]

Here is my DirectX diagnostics file. It demonstrates a top-notch gaming machine with signed drivers. A perfectly working gaming machine.

The problem is with the Firaxis software engineering team. THATS where the bugs have originated. NO game should have the ability to cause a Blue Screen and a subsequent hard reboot. There are serious problems with the way the Firaxis team is interfacing with the hardware, probably a thread deadlock or thread race condition.

 

[Natronomonas]

Man... am I the only one having these problems? Where can I get support? Can anyone here help me? And... can I get a refund for this game if I cant get it to work? I called the retailer... and they told me they wont accept software that had been opened back.

Anyway... im pissed... I payed money for this game and its got so many bugs it dont even run on my machine.

I want one of the following things to happen:

1.) I want this game to run properly on my computer.
OR
2.) I want a refund for the money I paid for this game title.

Is that asking for much?

You're definitely not the only one having problems. The tech support forums here are extremely active because of the buggy state of the game.

If you're having severe issues that warrant a return, I would really hassle the retailer to take it back - you can usually get your way if you get a manager or whatever. However, if they won't take it back (which I guess, at the end of the day, they don't have to - smaller shops especially could be difficult) make sure you email Take2 tech support and let them know. Also, Firaxis has a "contact" page with many people you can email to let them know: http://www.firaxis.com/company/contact.php
I let them know that I was having plenty of issues, and how I fixed some of them.
I also have a well-specced PC (not quite as good as yours) and find it frustrating that such an "A-list" game could be released with so many problems. Civ4 is the only program to cause any issues on my PC too.

The hard locks, there's not much to be done about them at this stage (except tell Firaxis/Take2), but try the "tech support FAQ" sticky for a "crash to desktop" fix suggestion.

edit: link for CTD is http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135019, make sure to start the game with the -shift- key held down to clear the XML cache. Same thing if you update drivers etc. I don't know if the CTD fix will help but it sounds like you've nothing to lose by trying!