Civilization IV won't start, cannot update

[kotiniemi]

I just bought the Civilization IV Complete today as a late x-mas gift for myself as I've been a fan of the earlier versions as well.

Little did I know the trouble I'd encounter and now I've run out of options after many hours of scouring the net for possibilities.

Symptoms: The game (Civilization IV) freezes when the loading is done, i.e. it has initialized everything (displays "DONE").

The computer is 3.06ghz laptop with ati mobility radeon 9000 card, 2gig ram. I've updated the ati driver although I couldn't get the catalyst programs to run. The OS is windows XP Home Edition, updated with all updates (service pack 2, .net 1., 2., 3 . and so forth).

I've attempted to update using patches 1.52, 1.61. but they all report that no civilization game is installed to start with.. I googled this matter as well but found no solutions.

Can someone give me a tip where to go from here?

Kindest regards,


Niko Kotiniemi

 

[ori]

Complete is patched up to date (though there are rumors about a possible patch for Beyond the Sword which might or might not come out at some point). So no need to patch at the moment.
Could you please open
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\<game name>\civilizationIV.ini
and set all values with log in their name to 1, then try to start the game you set this for (e.g. game name = warlords - then start warlords) and after it freezes just kill the application and post the contents of
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\<game name>\logs here (as a zip file).

Welcome to Civfanatics

 

[kotiniemi]

Thank you for your quick response, please find the logs attached as instructed.

Kindest regards,


Niko Kotiniemi

 

[ori]

this would have been to easy - the logs do not show anything unexpected...
when you start the games - does none of the three work?
also try setting the following line in the civilizationIV.ini to 0


; Specify whether to play in fullscreen mode 0/1/ask
FullScreen = 1

maybe this helps (though it is unlikely).
Could you post your dxdiag results (click start -> run -> type dxdiag -> hit enter -> click on save results in the popup and post that here...)?

 

[kotiniemi]

I tried all three games, none worked - they all froze like the base game.

Setting full screen to 0 didn't help either, everything loaded faster but froze nevertheless.

Please find the dxdiag logs attached.

My humblest thanks for your time.


Niko Kotiniemi

 

[boneys26]

64mb graphics card could be the main problem, thats dead on minimum spec other than that There isn't anything on your dxdiag thats wrong. is it just this game you are having problems with? have you tried uninstalling and cleaning up your hard drive and defraging it? was your anti-virus off when installing?

 

[GVBN]

Driver Date/Size: 3/1/2003 08:39:00, 272512 bytes

Your video card driver is really old. Download the latest Catalyst driver and use Mobility Modder (http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool) to make it compatible with Mobility 9000

 

[kotiniemi]

Sigh, I can't believe how much trouble this is giving me

I downloaded latest catalyst drivers, modded them to be compatible with the mod tool and now everything should be fine but alas - this has broken my directx.

Quick Googling revealed that direct x cannot be uninstalled, instead the whole OS should be reinstalled. The trouble is that DXdiagnose states that I've got direct x 9.0c, the files are file but the display section reveals Direct3D cannot be tested and that the property is not supported on the graphics card driver.

Attempting to start the game results in an error message from Civilization IV:

"ERROR

Initialize Renderer failed. Check DirectX Installation, Latest Graphics Drivers and Graphics Settings Parameters:
- width = 1024
- height = 768
- flags = 0xc
- hwnd = 0x604e0
- adaptrid = 0
- deviceid = 3
Error: Creation failed: Invalid 3D device type"

Is there any way to remedy this? Things got from bad to worse!

Kindest regards,


Niko Kotiniemi