Civ4 BTS crashes in windows 7

[dog6880]

i am trying to play Civ IV + warlords + Beyond the sword

I have Beyond the Sword patched to 3.19 (same crashes as before the patch)

DirectX 11 installed

Omega Driver for my gfx cards (crashed with my old drivers just the same.)

my dxdiag txt file is attached

i am running in Windows Vista compatibility mode

and as an administrator

It plays for a while, then something crashes it, sometimes i try to open the Civopedia, or i found a city or i attack or get attacked. Crashes the same no mater what Graphics level i have it on.

any help?

 

[ori]

did you try the newest release of the graphics driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_196.21_whql.html ?
is there an error message when it crashes?

Welcome to CFC

 

[dog6880]

no error message other then the standard windows 7 "...has encountered a problem windows is trying to find a solution.... yadda yadda"

I will do the newest driver and see what happens.

 

[dog6880]

ok works so far no crash but frequent screen flickering that only goes away if i hit the winkey and go to the desktop (minimize it) then go back into the game. but the flicker will return shortly after.

Graphic settings are all as high as it goes, any idea which one it might be? sometimes everything but the map itself will flicker off and not return till i minimize and then go back into it.

thanks again!

 

[dog6880]

graphics settings dont matter as i turned them all off as low as possible and it still happens.

makes the game unplayable. least the crashes stop but damn how do i make the screen stop flickering

tried it with SLI on and off

tried it windowed and full screen

tried it max graphics and minimal graphics

tried it in compatibility mode for vista, windows xp and as administrator

no good on all counts, flickers and flashes, crazy lines on the screen and sometimes everything but the terrain vanishes.


one step closer to being able to play this game, really glad the gfx drivers did the trick for the crashes but what now?

 

[ori]

can you make a screenshot of this?
is there any specific instance when it happens or some time that passes before it happens or the like?

note that my response time is rather slow currently

 

[dog6880]

cant screen shot it really. it is sort of like momentary freezes where nothing works so after i hit the print screen button i get an image of a normal map. The game stutters whenever i try to do anything. Looks like it has something to do with my CPU as my memory usage remains steady but my CPU is all over the place when in game.

i did take a Screen shot of my task manager and my settings in game.

The dips in CPU usage were when i hit the winkey to view it.

 

[ori]

did you try playing the game with antialiasing off?
is this game running as admin or are you just using an admin account?
does changing any of the graphics settings to low help at all?

 

[dog6880]

i have admin checked

lowering graphic settings still result in the "skips and stutters". I tried it in compatibility mode both windows vista and windows xp and no compatibility mode.

when graphics are set to low the visual stutters are lessened but the actual freezes still happen, feels like a skipping record.

getting a new processor gonna see if that helps, my comp is overdue for an upgrade anyway.

 

[dog6880]

You know this is completely unacceptable. This game does not work on windows 7 at all. lowest graphics settings, updated drivers, new processor 4 gigs of ram. Does anyone have a solution, a patch, a fix or anything?

dxdiag included. so why is this game crap on windows 7?

 

[Furiey]

It looks like there's a more recent graphics driver available http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_197.45_whql.html, it's dated Apr-10, yours (according to your dxdiag) is Nov-09. Particularly with W7 being so new it's worth keeping up to date.

What antivirus/firewall have you got? There have been some recent reports of antivirus/firewall software interfering.

One thing to note is that Civ 4 is not multi-core aware, so with your quad core it will never use more than 25% of your total CPU. Win 7 will spread that across the cores, but if you had Vista or below, you would see 100% on 1 core, 0% on the others.

 

[dog6880]

new driver april 10th nice lets see if THAT helps. i realize it will not take advantage of the multi core but the multi core shouldn't be screwing it up.

you guys are good at finding the latest drivers arn't you...

 

[Furiey]

I first started the drive hunt trying to get medieval total war to run. It's just a question of checking the manufacturers site and looking for your graphics card. With W7 being relatively new, drivers are being updated quite frequently so it is always worth a check. I've just got a W7 (64 bit) box myself but haven't yet had the time to install Civ, just updating Windows and drivers so far!

 

[dog6880]

still doesn't work even with the drive. stuff keeps vanishing and comming back and glitching, usually alt tab and go back in clears it up sometimes it doesnt.

units and cities vanish, FOW vanishes very odd.