Civ 4 Gold not running on Win 7 64bit

[kleach]

I uninstalled the older (working) version of civ4 that I had. Then I installed the new gold version I have which installed the latest exe which shows version 1.7.4
The install seemed clean and I did right click setup.exe and choose run as admin. I did the standard install...
It never created any icons in the end.. so I go to program files(x86)\2K Games\Fraxis\Sid... Civ 4... and run the civilization.exe and NOTHING HAPPENS.. no error nothing..
I right clicked and tried to change the compatibility mode to XP... still NOTHING..

ANY Suggestions?

-Ken

 

[Verrucosus]

Two suggestions:

1) Uninstall and reinstall in a custom folder outside "program files".

2) After running civilization.exe and nothing happening, search the task manager for processes called "civilization4.exe *32" and "rundll32.exe *32". If they are listed, the problem could be related to the Windows 7's Games Explorer. In that case please see this thread for possible workarounds: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=414531

Good luck!

 

[kleach]

sc config secdrv start = demand
sc start secdrv

Those commands worked.. I still needed a NO CD edition of the EXE so it would not look for the CD, since that was causing an issue in win7 64bit.

 

[Verrucosus]

Ah, then it was the disabling of secdrv.sys by a recent Windows patch (KB 3086255) that caused the problem. I failed to think of that one because it gave me an error message relating to administrator rights when I had it.

Anyone else running into this can refer to this discussion on the Civ3 forum for more details:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=552308

 

[Seraiel]

I got the problem with CIV not shutting down properly, when I exit the game, the process remains in the task-manager and I need to manually enforce its shutdown, otherwise I cannot re-start CIV without rebooting.

I've read the thread and the linked one, but find no solution towards that problem, but as it got mentioned here, does anybody actually have a workaround for that? I don't know the cause of that problem, because I didn't have it before re-installing my OS (also Win 7 x64) . If nobody knows, I'll search for a fix of this on my own, but thought I'd take the chance to ask here first .

 

[Verrucosus]

I'm afraid I don't know.

We both end up with a troublesome process in the task manager, but your problem is somewhat different from the symptoms I described in that thread I mentioned in post #2:

(a) You don't seem to have a problem starting the game without an internet connection in the first place.
(b) The remaining Civilization4.exe process is the one that you actually used to play and then exit the game as opposed to one that somehow got stuck during startup.
(c) It prevents you from starting another process of the same name.
(d) Your problem appeared only after reinstalling the operating system.

Given these differences I don't have much hope of my workaround being of much help in your case, but it won't hurt you to try: make a copy of Civilization4.exe and use that copy to start the game.

I should mention that this workaround is only useful as long as you are not lauching a mod from within the game. The game will always try to launch Civilization4.exe itself when it restarts itself as a mod.

See here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=508463

Good luck!

 

[Seraiel]

I've found a 1st solution to my bug. Running the game in Win XP SP2 compatibility mode makes it shut-down correctly, so with removing the process. Unfortunately, it also caused the program to only run on 1 Core and stutter badly because of it (actually ridiculous on a a 3.3GHz i7) , but maybe there's another compatibility mode or something that's closer to Win 7, so makes the program run on all Cores, but also properly removes the process on quitting.