Civ IV shuts down my computer!

[Depravo]

I have exactly the same problem and it has only got worse Used to be I could rely on getting to the Renaissance before it started tripping, now even on the lowest graphics settings and a 'normal' size map it seems to happen without fail while I am still in the ancient / classical age. Needless to say, it's not worth playing BTS till this is fixed.

Could be hardware I suppose, but it only happens when BTS is running.

 

[ori]

hard reboots/shutdowns are almost always due to hardware problems - most likely the graphics card. BtS/civ is very taxing on that - the fact that it is getting worse would just point to a declining health of the affected hardware component...
Software that on its own gets to shut down the computer would have very serious flaws - and with the number of users it would be to be expected that there would be much more reports of this...

 

[Light-Giver]

Just a word of warning Depravo, stop playing bts for now. If you continue to hardboot the computer, it could just kick the bucket on you one of the times. As ori said the fact that its getting worse means whatever component it is is deterierating. You could purminatly harm your computer and have mabe need to replace more than just that malfunctioning hardware.

Another thing, how old is your computer? Did you recently upgrade it in any way? It could be your power supply. If that starts to go, your computer would shut off whenever it tries to run on more power than the power supply can well... supply. Resulting in a hard shutdown with no warning. If your computer is old, especialy if you added or upgraded components, your power supply may need to be replaced.

 

[Depravo]

Thanks for the advice chaps.

It's not THAT old - 2005 IIRC - but yeah, I suppose it is knocking on.

I'll lay off the graphics intensive stuff then Seems odd, though, that I can run things like Silent Hunter 4 on it, albeit slowly, without it giving up.

 

[T.A JONES]

Thanks for the advice chaps.

It's not THAT old - 2005 IIRC - but yeah, I suppose it is knocking on.

I'll lay off the graphics intensive stuff then Seems odd, though, that I can run things like Silent Hunter 4 on it, albeit slowly, without it giving up.

Ya I can undertand, Civ4 is in a league of its own in this dept. Still isn't that your deafult or onboard card?
Those never worked good for me even in civ3. They suck a lot of ram from the system to I think. Remember when you add the latest to lower the allocated memeory for the video card setting in BIOS. THe more memory the better for this game and your new card should come fitting with plenty enough

 

[Genv [FP]]

Clean the dust in your PC to stop it from overheating.

 

[Depravo]

Clean the dust in your PC to stop it from overheating.

It is dusty as hell in there now you mention it. Hmm.

 

[Marco Avgousti]

my pc used to crash during games at random moments, and someone i know told me how to fix it, all i did was take my pc case of and clean my fan becoz it was causing my chip to overheat, surprisingly it worked and it hasnt crashed in months.(surprising how much dust collects in there)

 

[dcinbc]

Am having a similar problem, and it appears to be heat from the GPU forcing the BIOS to shut down - no logs from the OS (Vista SP1). Testing indicated that shading was the culprit. Am in the process of replacing the card under warranty, but simply dumbing down the graphics settings in Civ4 may help.

 

[MinuteOfDecay]

I had the problem of computer shutting down when playing Civ4BtS too. It first occurred when playing road to war. It became impossible to play any huge maps. Soon small maps with low graphics crashed the computer also. Lately I can't play any bigger game. The problem is getting worse. I guess my computer will start to shut down on windows loading screen

 

[vsipinen]

I have had similar kind of problems recently, and they seem to become worse. First I thought that the problem was related to the mod I was playing, but then I started to notice problems, when playing "normal" games and CivCol. Recently I had also noticed sometimes strange noise from the loudspeakers.

I have seen several kinds of symptoms: sometimes the computer reboots spontaneously, sometimes the game just crashes to desktop, sometimes the screen becomes black (sounds may continue, but I am not able to get anything to appear to the screen), sometimes - but quite rarely - some dialog suggesting sending some error report somewhere appears to screen.

Yesterday I tried to vacuumclean the computer - and for the moment I though that I would have helped - but then the game crashed again with black screen.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've had this happen a couple times. I always thought it was plain overheating but I'll take a look if it happens to me again.

 

[ori]

@vsipinien:
try to look in the windows event manager for those error reports and blue/black screen reports it tries to send and post them here - but most likely it is some piece of hardware failing

 

[vsipinen]

@vsipinien:
try to look in the windows event manager for those error reports and blue/black screen reports it tries to send and post them here - but most likely it is some piece of hardware failing

I tried to look for error logs, but first of all I was supprised that there seemed to be very few related to the Civilization. Considering that it has crashed so often recently I would have expected many more, but perhaps it has usually crashed in a way that has left no trace to the event log.

I managed to find few, and the following is example of those:

Faulting application civ4beyondsword.exe, version 3.1.3.1, faulting module civ4beyondsword.exe, version 3.1.3.1, fault address 0x002a9fc0.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 63 69 76 ure civ
0018: 34 62 65 79 6f 6e 64 73 4beyonds
0020: 77 6f 72 64 2e 65 78 65 word.exe
0028: 20 33 2e 31 2e 33 2e 31 3.1.3.1
0030: 20 69 6e 20 63 69 76 34 in civ4
0038: 62 65 79 6f 6e 64 73 77 beyondsw
0040: 6f 72 64 2e 65 78 65 20 ord.exe
0048: 33 2e 31 2e 33 2e 31 20 3.1.3.1
0050: 61 74 20 6f 66 66 73 65 at offse
0058: 74 20 30 30 32 61 39 66 t 002a9f
0060: 63 30 0d 0a c0..


Perhaps it is not even related to the problem that has occured most often (black screen and apparently totally unresponsive computer).

 

[ori]

unfortunately that just says that the game crashes but gives no more information that is useful for anyone outside the developer - you might want to contact take2 with this
are there any other crash reports in the even viewer ( looking in the viewer for the latest report - then causing the crash and afterwards looking for any new reports might yield a clue).

 

[vsipinen]

It seems that my Civilization crash problems were - at least partly - related to graphics card. I decided to buy a new graphics card, because I noticed some problems also with some other game (which had worked before) - and the computer seemed to work normally in all other use. After I changed the graphics card (and also power supply, because it seemed that the old one would not necessarily had been able to support the new graphics card) I managed to play the game several hours without problems. With the old graphics card the game had started to crash systematically after couple of turns.