Can't shake regular CTDs (in Vanilla or BTS)

[KevinTMC]

I've recently started playing Civ again, and have found that neither the latest patches nor moving to BTS is alleviating my old friend, the crash to desktop problem, which is quite rare in the BCs but gets more common as the game goes along, to the point where it can happen every three to seven turns by 2000 AD. (And that is on Normal size worlds.)

After having tried most every suggestion I've run across on this forum (mostly involving tinkering with the .ini file), and failing to eliminate the crashes, I'd pretty much resigned myself to living with it.

Except that the latest minor Gauntlet over at the HOF attracted me, and I started playing it. It is a Marathon level game, so it took hundreds of turns to even reach AD. I got as far as 210 AD before experiencing my first crash...and the HOF rules are strict, they only allow one crash in a game for it to be accepted. I continued playing, for hours more, sadly expecting to have an invalid submission for all my effort...the second crash took a while to come, but it happened at 1270 AD. Crashes at 1300 and 1305 soon followed...then it left me alone for almost a century, until it just crashed again at 1402.

The crashes almost always come when: a) a unit of mine is trying to move on the map, or b) the map view is trying to move so it can center on my next unit due to move. I get a few seconds' pause, during which the screen freezes but the music continues playing; and then the Windows XP "this application has had a problem and must close now" message. This latest game, it is happening in BTS...but the problem is to me indistinguishable from the CTDs I always experienced before in Vanilla, so I doubt it's anything specifically to do with the expansion.

Might anyone here be able to help me?

Here are a few basics. I have an eMachines T3256, which has an Athlon XP 3200+ processor (2.21 GHz), and is running Windows XP Home (SP3). The RAM has been upgraded to 1 GB, and the video card I have installed is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (AGP 512 MB), using the Omega drivers (4.8.442). Civ 4 and BTS are both installed with the latest official patches. Lately I have been playing all my games (whether Vanilla or BTS) with the latest HOF mod installed, plus Blue Marble 3. I take some care in maintaining the system, running various utility and security programs, and looking for patches and updates, on a regular basis.

I've tried paring back active processes in the Task List before launching Civ; doesn't seem to make much difference. My main active security programs, Avast antivirus and Comodo firewall, remain while I play, and FreeRam XP Pro also stays on to manage and report on memory, but I do try to order other utilities (e.g. True Image, System Mechanic) to go away during sessions.

I have tried switching the game itself to Windowed mode (1200x900, on a 1280x1024 display), and turning off antialiasing. Neither of those changes eliminated the problem. On the left side of the Graphics tab, other options are set to High; on the right, the only boxes checked are "Show Health Bars", "Detailed City Info", "Globe View Buildings Disabled", and "Show City Radius".

I turned on all the logs I knew to look for the last time I edited the .ini, and I've made a copy of the Logs folder in the My Games\BTS directory as it was immediately following the last crash. I would thus be able to provide any log files from there, and of course will gladly come up with any other helpful information.

For those of you who have read this far, thank you so much for looking at my situation; and I hope someone has an idea that will help.

 

[Steve2000]

Post whatever error/crash logs you have. I have no idea what they mean, but I am sure someone here can look through them.

You might also want to post exactly which changes you have made to the ini file. Also, you made the changes to the BTS ini file, not just the CIV Vanilla one right?

Have you tried using the catalyst drivers instead of the Omega drivers? I know Omega drivers are supposed to be better, but you never know. Drivers are funky things.

EDIT: I just realized that ATI does not specifically mention your card on their website. They list the PCIe version of the HD 2600XT, but not the AGP version. Maybe you are right to stick with the Omega Drivers!

 

[KevinTMC]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I have edited both .ini files. I'll post the BTS version at the end of this post.

As for the log files, I just don't know what to post...and there's a lot of it! The xml.log file, for instance, is over 4 MB.

Oh, I should mention that I got a lovely blue-screen-of-death reboot crash last night, the second one of those I've had this week. I've saved copies of the debug files that I was prompted to send to Microsoft after rebooting, in case anyone knows how to read those.

Okay, here's my BTS .ini file (with some bits that I know are irrelevant snipped, to help with post length).

[CONFIG]

; Allow Mouse Scrolling in Windowed mode
MouseScrolling = 0

; Enable Trilinear Filtering for the Minimap
MinimapTrilinearFilter = 1

; Enable Tree Region Cutting
CutTrees = 1

; A non-zero value overrides the FIELD_OF_VIEW parameter from GlobalDefines.xml
FIELD_OF_VIEW = 0

; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 0

; Don't show minimum specification warnings
HideMinSpecWarning = 0

; Random seed for map generation, or '0' for default
MapRandSeed = 0

; Random seed for game sync, or '0' for default
SyncRandSeed = 0

; Email address from which Pitboss reminder emails are sent
PitbossEmail = 0

; SMTP server authentication login for Pitboss reminder emails
PitbossSMTPLogin = 0

; SMTP server for Pitboss reminder emails
PitbossSMTPHost = 0

; Number of seconds to accept live game list updates from GameSpy (-1 for initial snapshot only, 0 for no live updates
GameUpdateTime = 0

; QuickStart - SinglePlayer games only!
QuickStart = 0

; Dont show the game background during movies - may speed up movie playing
HideMovieBackground = 0

; Enable/disable background music
PlayMusic = 1

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

; Use managed interface textures (may be safer but shouldn't be needed, uses more memory)
GUIManagedTextures = 0

; file format (TGA,JPG,BMP), Warning: TGA requires a lockable buffer which can lower performance
ScreenShot Format = JPG

; Allow Screenshots. May affect performance on some video cards
AllowScreenShots = 0

; Enable voice over IP capture and playback
EnableVoice = 0

; App Selects Specific IP to use for Multiplayer
SelectIP = 0

; Disable PAK memory mapping (May affect performance)
DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 0

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 1

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 1

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 0

; Specify whether to play in fullscreen mode 0/1/ask
FullScreen = 0

; Set max frame rate clamp (0 means none)
SetMaxFrameRate = 60

; Set to 1 to put PitBoss to sleep when no players are connected
PitBossSleep = 1

; Set to 1 to page units out when non-visible
DynamicUnitPaging = 1

; Set to 1 to page unit anims out when the unit is non visible
DynamicAnimPaging = 0

; Set to 1 for no on-screen event messages
NoEventMessages = 0

; Set to 1 for no tech splash screens
NoTechSplash = 0

; Set to 1 for no intro movie
NoIntroMovie = 1

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

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 1

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves.  0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

; Enable Audio
AudioEnable = 1

; Sync input to smooth interface (may run slower)
SyncInput = 1

; Force numlock always on while playing
ForceNumlock = 0

; Disable caching of file system (may slow initialization)
DisableFileCaching = 1

; Disable caching of xml and file system (may slow initialization)
DisableCaching = 1

; Specify a Mod folder (Mods\Mesopotamia), '0' for none
Mod = 0

[GAME]

; GameType options are singlePlayer/spLoad
GameType = singlePlayer

; Pitboss Turn Time
PitbossTurnTime = 0

; Max number of turns (0 for no turn limit)
MaxTurns = 0

; Game Options
GameOptions = 000001000100000000100000

; Victory Conditions
VictoryConditions = 1111111

; Save Path - relative to working (Civ4) folder
FileName = 0

; Account Username
Nickname = 0

; DirectIP Host Address
DirectIP = 0

; Modular XML Loading
ModularLoading = 0

; Main Menu Mods
MainMenuMods = Afterworld;Broken Star;Charlemagne;Crossroads of the World;Defense;FfH Age of Ice;Final Frontier;Gods of Old;Next War;Rhye's and Fall of Civilization;The Road to War

; Move along
CheatCode = 0

[DEBUG]

; Number of turns to autorun before exit (0 for no limit)
AutorunTurnLimit = 0

; Set App on Auto-Run
Autorun = 0

; Enable D3D9 Queries
D3D9Query = 1

; Establish connection to Python Debugger
HAPDebugger = 0

; Create a dump file if the application crashes
GenerateCrashDumps = 0

; 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

; Break on memory allocation order #
BreakOnAlloc = -1

 

[ori]

post all logs as a zip file