Civ4 and Windows 7: How-to?

[dmessier]

I'm having a bear of a time running vanilla Civ4 on my new Windows 7 64-bit computer. It's a new computer - not an upgrade, and I can install the game and any patches just fine. No errors come up.

However, when I go to run the game, clicking on the executable does nothing. The cursor turns to the Windows "waiting" cursor for a few seconds, but nothing happens. Furthermore, when I look into the directory the game is installed in, all the shortcuts (the ones that used to point to My Documents/My Games on my Windows 2000 computer) are broken - they point nowhere.

I see a lot of Windows 7 issues on this forum, but none match the behavior I'm seeing. Is there a "how-to" that exists somewhere for Civ4 / Windows 7 installs?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ori]

did you install the game with admin rights?

Welcome to CFC

 

[dmessier]

I started fresh. Uninstalled everything. Then, installed base Civ IV with admin rights. No patches.


Running the game does nothing. No windows pop up - nothing.

Any hints from people who have had the same experience with Windows 7? What do I do next?

 

[ori]

7 is not much different from vista for programming purposes - and Civ4 not patched to 1.74 is certainly not compatible with that. Do the following: patch to 1.61 then to 1.74 and run both installers with admin rights. Does that help?

 

[dmessier]

Installed both patches as admin. Still - nothing.

Clicking on the link to the game does nothing. No open windows, nothing.

The game was installed (by default) to:

C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Roaming\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\

All the shortcuts in that directory (i.e. to the saves directory) are broken. In Win2K they pointed to a subfolder in My Documents.

Does this sound familiar? Has anyone run into this before?

 

[ori]

according to the main windows 7 thread here its best to install the game into c:\games\ since windows 7 expects games to be there and prevents some of them from working anywhere else...

 

[dmessier]

Okay. Uninstalled from the default directory.

Installed (as admin) from the CD into C:\Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\.

Installed both patches as Admin.

Ran as Admin. Still nothing. Any other hints?

 

[ori]

is there anything else running in the background?
also: check the event viewer (see below link) for any application errors - then try to start the game - then check again for any new errors/events: post that information here please

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Open-Event-Viewer

 

[dmessier]

Nothing running in the background.

No Application errors show up in the Event Viewer.

I am at a loss here. Does Civ IV generate an error log for itself? I see a link in the Civ IV directory to _Civ4Logs, but the link is broken. All links in that directory were installed broken.

 

[ori]

open civilizationIV.ini (you can follow the _Civ4config shortcut in that same folder) and set all items with log in their name from 0 to 1 and save the file. Then start the game and after it fails see if there are any logs at the place where the above shortcut leads to - if so post them as a zip file attachment.

 

[dmessier]

Okay - so It works now!

Here's all I did: Per your advice, I set all the logging options in the INI file to 1. Then, before I ran it, I checked the link in the Civilization directory that pointed to the Civ Logs. It was broken (I mentioned this earlier, all links were broken to start.) So, I created the Logs directory where it was supposed to be, as per the broken link in the Civ folder. I clicked the icon to start... and it worked! I don't know what the magic was here. I set all the logging options back to 0, so I'm guessing it has something to do with creating the Logs directory (?). Either way - It works!

Thanks to all who were patient and gave me advice. I was lost before coming here.

 

[ori]

sometimes its just magic

glad it works