Civ4 Complete + Boot Camp = Blue Screen of Death

[sgerian]

Hi everyone, and thanks in advance for any help you can provide. This one's a doozy.

I recently switched to a Mac (13" MacBook Pro) and have been very happy with the switch with the exception of the lack of gaming options - specifically Civ IV. But not to worry - I have to use a few other PC programs anyway, so I just used Boot Camp on the computer to install Windows XP with service pack 2. Installed Civ IV, got it to work, no problems, everything's great.

The next time I started my computer in PC mode and tried to start Civ IV, I got the dreaded blue screen of death - just for one moment before the computer rebooted. Repeated attempts to start Civ were fruitless.

I had originally formatted the drive in FAT32, so I decided to restart Boot Camp all over again with an NTFS format. Once again, game played great the first time. After restarting the computer - blue screen of death. This occurs in both Beyond the Sword and Warlords as well as in plain Civ IV, I should point out.

I have no idea what would cause such a systemic breakdown in the computer, particularly since it always works the first time I install Windows and Civ IV. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. And yes, I know that "buy Civ IV for Mac" is a suggestion, and I may do that if all else fails, but I'd rather not purchase another copy if I don't have to. But if I do...

 

[ori]

Welcome to CFC

is this the European or the US version of Complete?
what does the blue screen say?

 

[sgerian]

Thank you for the kind welcome. I've been playing Civilization since 1991, more than half a lifetime ago, and I hope to be playing it for many years to come.

The U.S. Version - it has the white stripe at the top of the case which says "Games for Windows". It does not contain Colonization - only Warlords and BTS.

And unfortunately I have no idea what the blue screen says, because the computer shuts down within a second and the screen goes blank.

 

[Jerh9e1k5]

Hi sgerian!

I've had the exact same issue a few times as well! Although, I find that once the system restarts if I try Civ4 again it often works perfectly. I've been accepting it as a weird random glitch.

I recently upgraded my bootcamp XP to bootcamp Windows 7. I'm hoping that I won't see this issue anymore, although it's still too soon to tell.

Do you get it often? I only got it once in a while.

Cheers,
Jer

 

[ori]

if it does not have Colonization it is the European version of Complete
that the blue screen vanishes is likely because XP tries to restart the computer - you can prevent this in a setting - see here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/russel_02may13.mspx

 

[sgerian]

So on a lark I installed an old version of plain Civilization, just on the off-chance that it might add a missing driver or something else that was causing the problem. Sure enough, I got BTS to work. Repeated attempts have been hit-or-miss - I've only gotten Warlords to work once in about 8 attempts, while BTS has been more like 50-50. Still, it works, and as long as it continues to do so, I can put up with the occasional delays in booting up my computer repeatedly before it works.

Can't say this reflects well on Windows, though. I'm happy it works at least sometimes, but on one level the fact that the blue screen only occurs randomly actually speaks worse of the operating system than if it never worked at all. The first rule of computing is (or should be) that predictable inputs = predictable outputs. The fact that I can do the exact same thing twice, and on one occasion get the blue screen of death and on the other occasion get a perfectly functioning program, violates the whole concept of computing technology. This isn't science in action - it's more like magic.