Can't start the game- Help, Help

[claudius888]

How dissapointing... i went to so many stores and finally found the game only to not be able to play it!! It seems like it setup ok, but when i try to play it, it starts to load and than nothing... i don't even get the first screen- nothing. Can anybody help..... i have an nvidia 5700pci card on and XP Pro, if that makes any difference.

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

 

[Zubyo]

I have the same damn problem

Everytime I start the game (via shortcut that leads to Civilization4.exe) the program starts, load in memory for like 3 seconds, than closes itself without any feedback at all

Well, now im crying alone in my room, and Im probably going to shoot myself soon if I dont find the answer to why oh god why Im I the other one who suffers from this.

If you guys can help I would be very grateful

I installed the lastest Direct X that comes with the game, and my specs are

Athlon 1700+
1GB RAM
GeForce 4 Ti-4200 (which is suppose to be supported)
lastest Forceware (81.85)
WinXP SP2 very clean, without spyware or viruses

I tried it on my laptop too, (with an ATI Radeon 9700 ) and it does the same thing.

But on the 3rd computer that I tried, the game works

Im so confused; I guess it must be somethin I installed or a tweak that I made to my OS, I dunno...

Any help would be great

 

[hehateme]

I think i have the same problem and no solution yet
The game stops loading and the loading screen vanishes without a error message during the "init engine".
I have logging on.....
RESMGR: Scene file Art/Terrain/Lights/UnitLight.nif failed to load. Reason: (code:1) Cannot open file.

 

[Zubyo]

Youre even more lucky, you can get that loading screen... all that my Civilization.exe does is go on memory than it gets killed

It start " ~e5.0001 " before closing, if it helps solve the problem

 

[ill_i_bus]

i also get a similar problem. the game opens, starts loading, gets to load xml, and just disappears with no error messages at all. I have nf4 san diego 3700+, 1 gig of pc 6000 ram, sli graphics (nvidia)... a nice high end custom built job..and cant runny this crappy turn based pile of crock.lol

oh well, back to chessmaster, maybe it will be fixed in a patch, or else i'll see you all when civ5 is out in 3 years

 

[GIDustin]

There was a very similar problem with Black and White 2. Here is the fix for that. It might fix this one as well.

It seems as if the emulation options for Daemon Tools or Alcohol X% mess with the CD detection. The game sees the CD, so it attempts to load, but then it cant read from the CD due to the programs mentioned, and crashes.

Possible Fix:
I dont have alcohol 120/52% so I am not sure with that
Daemon Tools: Disable ALL emulation options, then set the number of drives to "Disable"

Please report if this works or not.

- GIDustin

 

[Kevin Nash]

Yes having exact same problem. Click on icon to launch. Load screen starts, when progress bar gets to "check xml" the process is killed and I'm right back to desktop

NVidia GEforce 5200 with new driver 81.85
Windows XP, 2.8 GHZ, 1.25 GB Ram

I'm trying to re-install game now but I doubt it's gonna help.

 

[ainwood]

Yes having exact same problem. Click on icon to launch. Load screen starts, when progress bar gets to "check xml" the process is killed and I'm right back to desktop

NVidia GEforce 5200 with new driver 81.85
Windows XP, 2.8 GHZ, 1.25 GB Ram

I'm trying to re-install game now but I doubt it's gonna help.

It may be a different problem than the others are mentioning. Try reading this thread..

 

[Kevin Nash]

It may be a different problem than the others are mentioning. Try reading this thread..

Yes I tried that solution. My settings were already set to US (I'm in the states) and the decimal and commas were correct.

I think tried DLing the XML solution from MS suggested and rebooting my PC.

I got the game to run this way. But it only runs one time. If I exit the game and try to launch it again same thing happens.

Simply clearing my xml cache doesn't work.

Note that the game boots out of the load screen on the "check xml" portion not on "audio" like the other thread is reporting.

 

[ainwood]

Note that the game boots out of the load screen on the "check xml" portion not on "audio" like the other thread is reporting.

Yes, but initialising audio is the next thing it does after checking XML - it may have finished checking the XML, then locked-up before it actually updates the screen to say that. Have you tried updating your sound-card drivers?

 

[ill_i_bus]

ok i got mine to work with no sound by simply pressing the power off button on my audigy 2 nx sound card! like i said mine was messing up at the checking xml bit. I did also donwload those xml updates, but they didnt do anything different, even after a reboot. am now going to see if creative have any new drivers for my soundcard to see if that helps. dont know if internal sound cards turn off as easily as my external one, but maybe you can go into control panel and disable ur sound card, and then try starting civ 4

 

[ill_i_bus]

updated my sound drivers form the creative website. the firmware for my external audigy 2 card were ok, but the windows one needed updates...all works fine..so far

 

[Kevin Nash]

updated my sound drivers form the creative website. the firmware for my external audigy 2 card were ok, but the windows one needed updates...all works fine..so far

Most recent driver update for my card (Creative SB Live Dell 5.1) was from Oct 2004.

I dl'd it (again) and still didn't work.

I tried disabling my card in windows as well and that didn't help either.

 

[Nessundorma]

I called tech support, and got the fix for my problem. Although my video card was new (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500), drivers were from 2004. Downloading most recent drivers from NVIDIA web site did the trick. Hope this helps . . .

 

[jtmalt]

With my NVidia 5700FX, I was only getting the "spinning globe" portion of the introductory video, and it would hang there with the music playing in the background. No menu would appear. No error messages, either.

Upgrading to the NVidia Forceware 81.85 Drivers seemed to fix that problem, and the game now appears to start and run normally.

How dissapointing... i went to so many stores and finally found the game only to not be able to play it!! It seems like it setup ok, but when i try to play it, it starts to load and than nothing... i don't even get the first screen- nothing. Can anybody help..... i have an nvidia 5700pci card on and XP Pro, if that makes any difference.

 

[Zubyo]

Hum, I tried a bunch of things, got all the drivers up to date, but my game still quits before anything happens...

I dont think it has to do with XML or drivers, of that its like one of the existing problems...

 

[Nessundorma]

Uninstall your NVIDIA video drivers, reboot (screen will look terrible, don't worry), go to NVIDIA.com web site, download new drivers. Worked perfectly for me.

 

[Zubyo]

Uninstall your NVIDIA video drivers, reboot (screen will look terrible, don't worry), go to NVIDIA.com web site, download new drivers. Worked perfectly for me.

Did you have the same problem as me ? (game closes before anything happens)

 

[generalshake]

Youre even more lucky, you can get that loading screen... all that my Civilization.exe does is go on memory than it gets killed

It start " ~e5.0001 " before closing, if it helps solve the problem

I think this is exactly what is happening too me as well. When I click the shortcut to start the game one or two things happen. One : nothing, nothing in the processes (when I hit ctrl-alt delete and click the processes tab) no screen pop up. Two : the civ4 will pop up the loading thing (the one before the bar one with XML in it pops up) and in the processes it shows ~e5.0001 (1,308ish k) and Civilization4.exe (18,182ishK).

If I keep hitting it over and over the game starts. The scenarios (some) require restarting the game too load though. When it goes too reset it does the One option above. I updated my graphics card driver and that did nothing. Upon reading another thread here I updated my sound card drivers. This fixed it for one play session. I tried again a few minutes and now it's back too doing 'one' and 'two' again. Although it takes a lot fewer 'hits' to get the game started, but since the saves I have are on a scenario that requires reseting I can't play them. If the 'second' load screen (with the XML) starts though it has always loaded. Getting it to pop up the second screen is the hard part.

I have 1gig of ram, Intel 3.2Gig processor, GeForce 5950 FX Ultra, and Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (WDM).

Any advice would be most welcome as all I can think of is reformating and I'm doubting that will work atm. Sorry for the long post I just wanted to make sure that what I'm having is like what the above person is experiencing.