CivIV Warlords Stalls or Computer Restarts!

[shibby80]

I never had a problem with CivIV. It's been running fine from release through to v1.61 until the last week or two. v1.61 has been crashing and I got no idea why!

I thought I would ignore it because of the expansion coming out (thought it would run well). Now I get Warlords and its even worse.

Every game of warlords i've played, at random times it will stall and the music will loop.
I can't do anything but reset. Sometimes it saves me the trouble and the computer resets itself or it gets really weird jaggered graphics as it stallls.

I updated all my drivers for motherboard, graphics and sound. Updated Bios. Tried unplugging all power to cd-roms. Pulled everything apart and gave it a really good clean.

Uninstalled all my games and software that weren't essential. Cleaned up my hard disk. Re-installed CivIV + Warlords. Defragged hard disk and loaded up a game of Warlords. It runs really good but then BAM out of nowhere no warning, it dies. I don't know what to do.

I think its a bit of a rip you know. Cause I don't have problems with any other games like this! and there doesn't appear to be an easy answer.

specs:
Abit AA8 motherboard
3.2ghz P4 775 2mb cache
1gb DDR2-533
Asus x600xt xtreme 128mb
10,000rpm 74gb sata hard disk

 

[Gyathaar]

computer rebooting by itself is usually a sign of overheating (though could be other hardware related things too).
As for why it recently started happening.. perhaps summer heat?

 

[shibby80]

Overheats? Hm maybe but I don't think so.

It is still winter here and its a Antec Super Lanboy case with two big case fans front and back.

I admit though I haven't looked at the temps as yet. I'm ok with computers but it is getting hard doing what I have already tried with bios and pulling apart system and cleaning it for a game to run properly
Didn't come in the manual.

I will find some software and check the temperatures though!

Whats a good program to use? I can run dual monitors if I have to, so I can test it while the game is running, to check for gpu/cpu changes.

A few recents FPS i've really put some hours into include Doom 3 and Half Life 2. So why would these games run perfectly for hours? (back in summer too that was) yet CivIV is just screwed.

Would have thought a game like Half Life 2 would work the computer harder than CivIV but than again i'm not a expert. Just getting pissed off.

edit: I forgot to mention from your reply that it rarely reboots itself. Its only done that a couple of times out of the many many times now its stalled. I usually press the reset button. alt control delete, windows key, alt and tab. Nothing works.

 

[shibby80]

Well its not over heating.

I also tried omega ati drivers and tried running it in opengl as well.

There is something majorly wrong with the game. The graphics glitch and flicker all the time too now. Seems worse.

I did manage to fix it though, I went to add/remove programs and uninstalled it.

I'll keep an eye out for a future patch and try it again then. But what else can you do? I doubt i'll be able to get a refund now.

What a waste of money.

 

[crunch]

Try a game without Mehmet II / Ottomans. I suspect this guy is causing trouble (CTDs).

 

[shibby80]

I reinstalled Civ4 tonight after reading that thread about Catalyst 4.12, that is doesn't crash with version.

So I downloaded and installed 4.12. It was quite good actually. Felt a little bit faster between turns and diplomacy. (I had my hopes up)

But around 200bc when I clicked "convert" to to christianity it stalled. But this time I didn't have to hit the reset button.

After 10-15 seconds it switched back to windows and said something like "The display driver has stopped working properly and needed to be shut down"

It was in a miserable resolution 800x600 I think with 4 colours or 4bit colours i can't remember. But it looked bad.

Did anyone test this game or what? I'm not happy, pc exceeds the requirments to play it. Yet I have to go through all this to try to get it to work.

I won't post any more in this thread because im noticing so many similar problems people are having and noone knows how to specifically fix it.

This is the shottiest game i've ever had but also one of the best but only when it works. 1.52 was the best for me.

 

[Zanmato]

Extreme longshot:
Increase the AGP aperture size if your card uses the AGP, I think it's PCI-e though. Disable the monitor power saving options so it never switches off the screen after so many minutes.

 

[shibby80]

Hey thought i'd post

Heres the exact error message. I tried another game and it was running nicely then boom out of nowhere about 80AD. This time the screen went black and I could still hear the game playing music and ending turns when I pressed enter.

"Windows - Display Driver Stopped Responding

The ati2dvag display driver has stopped working normally. Save you work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to upload data about this failure to Microsoft."

lol I give up. I spent too many hours trying to get this working and now i'm over it. Hopefully a patch will come out soon fixing it.

p.s I turned off the monitor power saving to never and yes its pci-e card.

 

[bselig]

I have no solution, but I'm having this exact problem. CivIV vanilla(though I never tried the 1.61 patch), and every other ap, runs fine.

 

[Downer]

I also have the same problem and I know it's not anything hardware related(overheating, power issues, ect). Civ4 before Warlords played without a hitch, and now I have gotten 2 HARD crashes, meaning it happens totally randomly, my monitor shuts off and my sound is a constant blur of noise and screeches. I haven't had this kind of crash in years and I play PC games like theres no tomorrow, so this has to be some kind of internal problem with the expansion. I still play the game(it's too addicting!) and it's been fairly stable since the last crash and I SUSPECT it might be something to do with your sound setting within the game. Right now I have it set to 5.1 discrete instead of EAX 3/4(I have an Audigy 2). We'll see how that goes...

 

[crunch]

If you suspect it's sound's fault, you can disable audio in the ini file (EnableAudio=0)

 

[Carch]

I started seeing this exact same thing after getting the latest (1.61) patch. Only other graphics glitch I've seen with Civ IV was the garbled terrain graphics when zooming out, in a previous version. Overheating is not an issue. Nothing else in my system has changed except the new Civ. version.

Every game I play, I'm able to play 15-30 min, then the game locks up, music starts looping, garbled graphics cover the screen (one bit of garbage even seems to track the mouse). The only thing I can do at that point is hard reboot.

Very frustrated.

[edit]

FWIW, I uninstalled the game, downloaded & installed the 1.52 patch from Gamespot, and the problem appears to be gone. I noticed that the 1.61 patch has several extra graphics options not present in the 1.52 patch. I suspect there are bugs related to those changes that were causing my problems. I tested with a basic setup--all default options, at resolutions 1280x1024 and 1024x768, with sound on and off, and no matter what I did, 1.61 would crash a short while into a new game. I'm trying higher resolutions and other sound options now with 1.52.

 

[Carch]

Oh, I suppose some system specs might be useful for others having this problem:

P4 3.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Win XP Pro, DX 9.0c
nVidia 6800 GT (not overclocked), ForceWare 84.21 (84.21_forceware_winxp2k_english_whql.exe -- latest nVidia driver 91.31 has an annoying bug at startup for non-SLI systems)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, driver v. 5.12.0001.1164 (SBAX_WEBUP_LB_2_08_0004.exe)

DXDIAG shows no problems.

 

[dullingwine]

I get exactly the same as Downer above. Monitor loses signal couple of times, speakers make a terrible screaching noise, and then computer reboots. Nice. I didn't even get to start the game, it did this a couple of screens into 'custom game'.

I'm playing on a widescreen 1680 x 1050 in window mode (maximised), never ever had a problem with Civ IV. ATI drivers are the latest.

 

[shibby80]

well if anything is to come out of this atleast I know now i'm not the only one with this problem.

I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with my computer!

But I guess not, it's bitter sweet. Nothing wrong with computer but I can't play the game

 

[lionheart]

Wow.. I'm surprised to see so many people seem to have the same problem..

I bought Warlords yesterday, but didn't have much of a chance to play it yet, so when I sat down to play today I was looking forward to playing with Caesar Augustus.. Then, a short period into the game, the computer suddenly shut itself down.. Trying again, the same problem occurs several moments into the game..

I don't think I had the same problem with the original and 1.61 installed, but then again, I hadn't played the game for some time before I bought Warlords..

But this is definitely very, very irritating and I hope Firaxis finds a way to fix it soon..

 

[BirraImperial]

I have exactly the same issue, after installing Warlords. I play for about 15min. and then the game freezes for a moment, i get a BSOD for just a second and then the PC reboots itself. I never had a single problem with Civ 4 before, now both Civ4 and Warlords crash!

 

[mr. poopyhead]

i think i have the same problem as others in this thread... after playing warlords for 20-30 mins, i get a bunch of garbled stuff on the screen and my computer freezes. can't alt-tab, or get the task manager up... must reset. at first i thought it was my video card overheating, so i ran rivatuner and had it display my GPU temp on-screen while i played. my temps were around 85 celisius when playing, which is fairly reasonable.

here's a picture of my screen after a crash:


here are my relevant specs:
MSI neo2 platinum s939
athlon 64 3000+
2GB corsair XMS PC3200
BFG geforce 6800GS 256MB

 

[shibby80]

I been playing around editing the games 'ini' file today from suggestions on this forum. Didn't make any difference.

Still stalled, screen went blank no signal. Sound repeated itself and needed hard reboot.

If any of you manage to fix this problem somehow, let us know.

Otherwise I'm going to have to wait for a patch and HOPE that it fixes the problem(s).

Its never been so hard to get a game to work. Infact I don't recall ever having any real problems with a game before this one.

Feel a bit ripped off that the testers wouldn't have noticed if its happening to so many people?

I guess all you can do is wait and hope this problem is adressed/solved in the form of a patch.

I'm all out of ideas

 

[Carch]

YES! Mr. Poopyhead's picture is *exactly* what my screen looks like when this happens!