BTS under Vista

[Galatian]

Ok this is not really a "in-game" related bug, but I think it still shows how poorly BTS was programmed.
I installed BTS over my normal Warlord program. but the setup won't create any desktop icon nor any entry in the start menu. So in order for me to actually start the game I either have to always use the auto run function on the dvd drive or use the right .exe file in the Civ folder. The workaround is to just create a shortcut from that .exe file to the desktop, but that should usually be done by the installer itself.
Furthermore I always get the normal Vista request once I start BTS if I really want to allow the program to start. I never had this screen appear on Warlords or Vanilla.
This bug is especially odd considering that BTS was made for Vista

I attached a screenshot of my desktop showing all the problems I was talking about.

Here is my system:

Core 2 Duo 2 GHz
2 GB Ram
7900 Go GS
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit

All software is in German as you can see (and please don't mind my mistakes now that we are speaking of it )

 

[Commander Bello]

I can confirm your observations. It is the same for Vista Ultimate 32-bit (all patches and updates have been installed before installation of BtS)

This is
a) a surprise, since in 2007 you would expect these things from a properly set up installation routine
b) annoying, since you have to search for the .exe and then create a shortcut, as you have described.

 

[Galatian]

I wonder if the XP Users have the same problem
It would be really ironic if this only occures under Vista since BTS has been made to work on Vista...

 

[ori]

I wonder if the XP Users have the same problem
It would be really ironic if this only occures under Vista since BTS has been made to work on Vista...

No we don't - and have you applied the 3.03 patch? About the only thing it is supposed to fix are Vista related problems (it won't change the install stuff of course )

 

[Galatian]

No we don't - and have you applied the 3.03 patch? About the only thing it is supposed to fix are Vista related problems (it won't change the install stuff of course )

Is the 3.03 out to be downloaded though the game? If not then I don't have it. Here is another Thread about the same problem and I just posted a possible workaround.

 

[ori]

Is the 3.03 out to be downloaded though the game? If not then I don't have it. Here is another Thread about the same problem and I just posted a possible workaround.

It is out - so if the game tells you there is no patch, then there is none

 

[Galatian]

Hmm I'm downloading it from the Firaxis site right now, but I am checking the CIV ingame update everyday and I always said, that there are no updates available. Might this be a bug in the German version? Or is the german version just receiving the update from a different server, which hasn't received the update yet?

 

[Commander Bello]

The 3.03 has been reported to cause some strange effects in terms of display, CTD's when accessing the civilopedia and so on.

As your game meanwhile seems to be running I would propose to skip the 3.03

 

[stryker]

Check in the "Games" folder off the start menu. "Games for Windows" classified games should put the shortcut there.

 

[KingTux]

Well, I've been keeping silent for a couple of years, but this is well worth breaking the silence over. This is a really simple bug to fix. By default, the installer is putting both Civ4BeyondSword.exe and the pitboss in the C:\Windows directory also. However, the executables in this directory don't have the annoying UAC popup. The problem is that none of the other files are there. So, to fix it, copy these files over the ones in your default install.

Also, this second part might not be necessary, but is nice to do anyways. Open up regedit and find all the Beyond The Sword entries. Replace the C:\Windows\Civ4BeyondSword.exe entries to refer back to its proper location. This'll be in two locations. After that, there's no more issues with this at all. Enjoy!


And, I don't think that this was due to poor programming. Apparently Firaxis did get it right, it just might be that Microsoft didn't document things as well as they should have, or that they left in outdated documentation. As I've been doing software development through school and internship, documentation seems to be a big problem, as there's either too much that's useless, you get too little information, or it's simply outdated. However, now that I've mentioned this, it should be easily fixable by Firaxis when they release the next patch. With as simple as this is to solve for Vista users, there's no reason not to do it.

 

[Galatian]

Hey thanks for the help, but it really doesn't work. I was looking in the folder you told us, I also turned on the option to show hidden and system related files. No good. Except of the normal installation folder (which is in my configuration in D:\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword and all files there require the UAC confirmation (except of Pitboss though?!?).
The search also didn't show up any other files related to this.

 

[KingTux]

Well, I fixed it on my parent's computer that way (I got Beyond the Sword for my dad's b-day). So, are you overriding the existing exe's with the ones in the Windows directory. Please post if it's the same deal or if there's some other issue. Also, if it's just the icon that's not the same, just reboot and it will update .

EDIT: I looked at your post and I saw that you looked in the Windows directory. So, in that case, can you tell me what HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Firaxis Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 4 - Beyond the Sword/INSTALLDIR (or equivalent when translated) says (use regedit. Just search for it and run it). There's some other locations that you can find the c:\windows entry. I'd check wherever that points.

EDIT 2: As an example of where I found a good copy of the exe's, here's a screenshot of my parent's c:\Windows directory with the exe's circled:

And here's one of the regedit entry you want to look at (I already changed it):

 

[Galatian]

Well your parents just installed it directly to their system partition c:\ which I usually don't do (out of safety reasons...something you probably don't have to worry about since you are using Ubuntu ). Anyway I installed it in my d:\ partition. Here are the pictures for the reg entry (remember I have the 64-bit version, might have something to do with that) and the installationfolder, which shows that the real .exe file for BTS requires a UAC conformation, but the Pitboss doesn't.

 

[Commander Bello]

Something funny just happened for me.

After leaving the game, I had a complete crash. No big deal, but I had to restart in "Safe Mode (???) [unfortunately, I do not have an English Windows installation]"

After I did start my computer in this mode, the desktop symbol for BtS showed up and now is available in normal mode as well. Furthermore, the link is available in the start menu as well.

 

[Galatian]

Something funny just happened for me.

After leaving the game, I had a complete crash. No big deal, but I had to restart in "Safe Mode (???) [unfortunately, I do not have an English Windows installation]"

After I did start my computer in this mode, the desktop symbol for BtS showed up and now is available in normal mode as well. Furthermore, the link is available in the start menu as well.

Well let me just check that out. Should be easy to do...just punch your F8 button (sometimes also F12, depends on the manufacture) to open the boot menü.

 

[KingTux]

Well your parents just installed it directly to their system partition c:\ which I usually don't do (out of safety reasons...something you probably don't have to worry about since you are using Ubuntu ). Anyway I installed it in my d:\ partition. Here are the pictures for the reg entry (remember I have the 64-bit version, might have something to do with that) and the installationfolder, which shows that the real .exe file for BTS requires a UAC conformation, but the Pitboss doesn't.

They just used all the defaults, so I thought that this would help most people. Maybe it just installed weird on their computer. Sorry this didn't help you. I mainly was trying to point out that UAC prompt-free versions of the exe exist, so Firaxis at least thought of that.

[OT]

Spoiler :

As for Ubuntu, I keep /home is on a separate partition for some similar reasons. One major benefit of doing this (which you wouldn't be able to do, at least to the same degree. You'd lose your registry) is that if I really want to nuke my install some time and switch or upgrade distros, I don't lose all my personal data.

Also, I've used Linux full time long enough that I've started to notice that I now talk a lot like the rest of the Linux fanatics out there . I still have Windows, it's just that I don't trust it on anything other than a VM.

[/OT]

 

[Galatian]

Hmm so many persons have the same problem...I seriously doubt that Firaxis is not to blame. I mean they should have at least noticed it when beta testing. I mean opening the program and noticing that an UAC prompt appears under Vista can't be that hard?!?
I like Linux a lot, but I don't use. I'm too much an Office addict and I am playing a lot of games, so there really is no use for Linux on my Computer.

 

[KingTux]

Hmm so many persons have the same problem...I seriously doubt that Firaxis is not to blame. I mean they should have at least noticed it when beta testing. I mean opening the program and noticing that an UAC prompt appears under Vista can't be that hard?!?
I like Linux a lot, but I don't use. I'm too much an Office addict and I am playing a lot of games, so there really is no use for Linux on my Computer.

Like I said, I think that it's moreso due to the documentation that Firaxis had to deal with. If the moderators and/or Firaxis post saying that it's alright to upload the two exe's for this fix, then I'll gladly do it. HOWEVER, if I don't have that permission, I won't do it, just because it really is Firaxis' intellectual property. BTW, it's 3.03, because it solved crackling audio in the main menu on my parent's computer, which is rather strange, as that's the only place where it would occur.

[OT]

Spoiler :

As for some Linux evangelism, I'll restrain myself from doing too much just this once . However, I did at least hint at how you can still have Windows with Linux . But I will be frank about it, which you probably won't get too often from true fanatics. Linux may do enough for most people, but at the same time, I don't think that it's for everyone, much the same as Windows. Linux is much more about enabling you to do whatever you like. It's much clearer what's happening on your machine with Linux than it is with Windows, but there's some people out there who would have a hard time with it because they've used Windows their whole life. Basically, I think that it's much easier for a user who's never used a computer before to use a distro that's user friendly (e.g NOT slackware, gentoo, or source. Basically something that doesn't force you to compile everything) and doesn't deviate from Unix/Linux logic too much (e.g. NOT Mandrake). There's nothing worse than learning one distro and learning that Linux really isn't like that at all.

Also, as an aside, I think that UAC really needs to be overhauled to a certain point. Anything that conditions a user to click a yes box (or, in this case, an allow button) isn't a good idea. These should be seen rarely so that users don't get conditioned. It would be much better if for many of these operations that a balloon pops up and says that an action occurred, and that if it wasn't intentional, to click it to undo it. If Microsoft at least did that, I'd at least respect Vista a little more. It really doesn't fix the principle of least privilege violations that Windows has had forever if you're conditioning them to ignore real security threats.

Anyways, I probably went a little long on this, but that probably was because I made a deal with myself that this would be my last post in this thread if I couldn't contribute much else. I'm just wavering too much off topic . Must be due to my sig...

[/OT]

 

[binkley]

I'm on Vista Home Premium and still get crackling sound with the opening music (game music is fine), and--much worse--the game frequently crashes with Vista complaining that civ stopped running.

I'm a professional developer, and am happy to take any debugging steps necessary to diagnose and fix my issues.

 

[ori]

I'm on Vista Home Premium and still get crackling sound with the opening music (game music is fine), and--much worse--the game frequently crashes with Vista complaining that civ stopped running.

I'm a professional developer, and am happy to take any debugging steps necessary to diagnose and fix my issues.

Welcome to CFC

What you could do is enable logging as shown below. This way the game logs all things it does and maybe the error that crashes it is recorded...
Edit the CivilizationIV.ini (in .../My Games/Beyond the Sword) to set the following values as shown:

; Set to 1 for no python exception popups 
HidePythonExceptions = 0 

; Create a dump file if the application crashes 
GenerateCrashDumps = 1 
 
; Enable the logging system 
LoggingEnabled = 1 
 
; Enable synchronization logging 
SynchLog = 1 
 
; Overwrite old network and message logs 
OverwriteLogs = 1 
 
; Enable rand event logging 
RandLog = 1 
 
; Enable message logging 
MessageLog = 1

Note: this could slow the game if certain Antivirus software runs at the same time...
This creates a couple of log files in .../My Games/Beyond the Sword/Logs and overwrites them every time you start a new game. Maybe there is something to find...
1000th post