Civilization IV Regular Version Windows 10 Help

[starsaber25]

Hello all. Thank you for having me. I have not played Civilization IV in a very long time. It is basically one of two PC games that I have never thrown away. I decided today that I wanted to play it again but as many people figure out, I cannot run it on Windows 10. I installed it from the discs and then it gives me the errors that the app cannot run. It appears that I just have the regular version of the game. Every time I search on the forum here I keep seeing the patch for BTS listed. Is there anything that can be done to have the regular version of the game run on Windows 10? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I am by no means a computer expert. I can do basic things on a computer. Here is a picture of the game I have just to be sure.

 

[f1rpo]

My guess is that the BtS EXE was copy-protected by SafeDisc (version 4) before patch 3.19 removed that. The Civ 4 EXE probably has the same protection still in place (even when fully patched). We can't assist with removing that. A web search suggests that Win10 removed support for both SafeDisc and SecuROM. Maybe someone has found a way to at least restore the SafeDisc functionality. There seem to be some guides in that vein, but I can't test those, and the procedure seems to involve installing the SecDrv driver and working around its lack of a digital signature. That sounds a little too complicated, possibly risky, for a non-expert user. I also don't trust those guides much; the first one I found said that one only needs to re-enable the SecDrv service on Win10, but I get the impression that this will, at best, suffice on Win8.

I also assume that you would need a CD/DVD drive that can still read your old disc, and it's conceivable that copy-protection isn't the only issue that stops the base game from working on Win10.

Edit: It is a sad state of affairs, also for BtS players, that the base game and the Warlords expansion can't be launched anymore. A few scenarios were never ported to BtS, and the tutorial is only accessible through the base game.

 

[Civilizationyeaah]

If you want a very easy fix out of that situation, it is available on steam and works perfectly (unlike civ 3 on steam) but you would have to pay of course which stinks considering you have already bought it but maybe the DLC upgrades are worth it?