CivIII suddenly won`t run anymore - HELP!

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Yesterday I played CivIII, quit to check my e-mail, tried to restart it - it got as far as the Intro screen, then I heard the CD-Rom spin up.... and that`s it. Nothing happened. Now I`ve seen this before so I rebooted Windows, then tried CivIII again - always worked before. But it didn`t run.

OK, uninstall Civ, reinstall it, reinstall the patch - dead.

OKDOKEY! System recovery to day one. reinstall everything (2 hours later) - civ is dead!


I`m using a 1200 MHz Laptop with Win XP home. All software is purchased, not illegaly copied. Everything else is fine just the CD won`t run anymore. I can install and autorun works fine but the game won`t start! I had the same problem prepatch under Win2k but under XP I only had trouble when Civ wasn`t the first program I started after booting......
And I didn`t change a da*ned thing! Not even sound on/off or such!



W H A T C A N I D O ?????

UPDATE:
installed the nocd crack. Now I get error message saying civilization3.tmp0 has encountered an error and must be closed down..
strangely I can`t get at the content of the error message XP wants to send to MSoft. Can`t find the file and can`t copy and paste from the window....

here`s what I copied by typing:

AppName: civilization3.tmp0 AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: unknown
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00000300


Exception Information
Code: 0xc0000005 Flags: 0x00000000
Record: 0x000000000000000000 Address: 0x000000000000000300

System information
Windows NT 5.1 Build: 2600
CPU Vendor Code: .....


Module 1
Civilization3.tmp0
Image Base: 0x00400000 Image Size: 0x0047e60e
Checksum: 0x00000000 Time Stamp: 0x3bb9d9876
Version information

etc.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

sorry for posting in the wrong place - i was too shellshocked by the suude "death" of civ that i simply was unable to act normaly

 

[eyrei]

I have this happen and it seems to be fixed by restarting your computer.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

eyrei: seems you misunderstood me: I not only restarted but also reset Win XP to an earlier date. Doesn`t help. neither does reinstalling Civ.....

 

[eyrei]

Ooops. Sorry.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

I`m back!!!!! When other programmes also started acting strange I got the suspicion that it might nor be Civs fault . and it wasn`t. I had a faulty RAM module......

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!