Civ 4 crashes whenever i create a city

[Zealocracy]

So the 1st week or two of playing the game I had no problems at all (original game only 1.61 i think), then it started crashing on game load screens every time (every single crash that I got crashed my video only, music still plays in background until I reset comp) So I decide to update to the latest version of the game(with all expansions), reinstall everything and it all works great for another 2 weeks.
Now its back to its old habits, the game loads fine (mostly)now, but it continuously crashes in game whenever I try to settle a new city, engage an enemy in combat, or try to modify a tile (build / destroy improvements)I cant seem to resolve the problem on my own.
Here's a list of the things I've done to fix this:

-reinstalling game
-re-downloading and reinstalling game (Purchased from D2D)
-installing a fresh copy of windows xp64 and installing game
-switched out video cards (HD 4650) (get the same error)
-made sure all files are contiguous with disc defrag
-reinstalled my video card drivers
-cleared out civ 4 cache folder
-toggled on the logging option in config file ~ the event(s) however does not show in log
-turned all of my graphics to bare minimum and had the game still crash on the same events.

I feel like I've done just about everything I can do to make this work short of buying a new computer and tossing this one out the window.
Any help would be much appreciated and please let me know if I left out anything

Thanks,

here are my system specs:
Win Xp 64 latest updates
6 gigs ddr2 pc6400 mem
ati raedon hd3600 video card (1gb of mem)
MSI k9a platinum mother board
AMD dual core 3.1g processor

PS: also with this latest Install when I enter main menu It tells me that my computer is below recomended performance settings?? I'm pretty sure I was running the game on high and only getting slow when i zoomed out on huge maps

 

[ori]

there are a total of 5 settings with log in their name in the config file - set all of them from 0 to 1 -> the logs are in my games\civilization 4\logs post them as a zip file please.
Also please post your dxdiag results file.

Welcome to CFC

 

[Zealocracy]

Here are the log files from that log folder, I enabled all the logging setting in the config, and ran the game again to crash it, but the log files dont look like they got any data, they werent modified since the install, also since last night I tried to see if windows computer management had any thing to show in log files~ nothing,

 

[Zealocracy]

here is the dxdiag

 

[ori]

the logs are incomplete - if you did enable all five logs settings and it gives this my hunch would be that your my games folder is write protected for whatever reason - allow writing to these files and repeat
As for the dxdiag: is there a reason windows is not uptodate? try installing SP3 if possible.

Note: I'll be offline through the weekend so will likely not respond until Monday

 

[Zealocracy]

XP 64 is only at sp2 it follows the same releases as windows server 2003 so I am 99% certain I am up to date on windows, I have a valid copy and widows says im up to date as well. Also the log files are not read only, I was able to edit them myself but still unable to get any data from them.

 

[Zealocracy]

Ok I've Isoalted the problem to a pioneer external dual layer cd burner. when I unplug it everything runs fine. thanks for the help tho!

 

[ori]

Glad it worked out - its a weird cause though