Comfirmed FIX for Crashes and Reboots! (ATI Cards)

[doubledanger]

BUMP please sticky this!

 

[mikesmith127]

Confirmed by me at least. I had frequent reboots and crashes (rarer in early games and smaller games, but very common in late games and large games). I had originally been playing with Catalyst 5.6 (on a 9700 pro if you must know). I upgraded to 5.10 (latest) and had the same issues. Not only this, but updating to 5.10 seemed to destroy my DoD source framerates.

(...)

2. Install Catalyst 4.12 - This is the major point! Catalyst 4.12's have gained fame for their stability and speed. They fixed all my Civ4 problems, as well as improved my Source engine speeds by 10-20 fps. Also it fixes crashes in WoW in certain spots and dungeons that people experience with ATI cards.

You can find the drivers by using google. I believe I got them off Fileshack. You are welcome to find a suitable mirror. FYI though, there was 4.12 betas released too. Make sure you get the official 4.12's, the betas might work, but the officials is what Im using.

Link : http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=5984
(...)

This worked for me, too!

I have an ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 and had crashes, reboots, and was very unhappy. After installing the 4.12 drivers, however, I have not had a problem, and this is after several hours over several days of playing. Firaxis needs to post this on their Civ IV website.

-Mike

 

[doubledanger]

Actually ignore my previous "Bump"

This didn't work for me, I thought it did, but it broke again. It's a problem with the game (random CTD) not the drivers.

Game runs fine, just randomly crashes. No errors.

 

[mmichaels1970]

Catalyst 4.12 didn't work here with ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 on Dell Inspiron 5100 2yr old. Omega drivers didn't work either.

They're calling it the "Cheshire Cat" I think. Also the "midnight map".

Sad...I waited soooo long for this game to come out. Didn't realize that while I was waiting I should have been saving up for a new laptop!

I'm going to have to give it a poor rating and warn laptop users on CNET.

marc

 

[jamesk]

Hello distressed gamers,I have an odd problem of the game running perfectly IF i turn on the bare map option or whatever that make your units invisible, i can still see citys and everything even finish long games BUT if i turn the toggle back to see my units workers and enimies soldiers i instantly crash out. so i cant really play, only build up a city and guess where things are with mini map. I have doone al popular fixes, any suggestions to help me play with units visible?? i crash instantly if i build a city etc with them visible, so i must go from turn one to the end without seeing units and such. Kinda wierd issue i guess, but unit animations work fine just if i build a city or see other ppls units lol. Useing Radeon 9200 PCI
with 510 omega amd all updated drivers

 

[ranLR]

Has anybody had this fix decrease their load times at all?

 

[CharlieM]

Couldn't get the game to load with "new" drivers for my Radeon 9550, but this fix did it for me, too. I am thrilled and very grateful!

 

[tweekster123]

Having installed patch 1.09, I tried installing the latest catalyst drivers to see if the patch fixed the problem I was having with random reboots in the second half of the game. The problem still exists. The game has crashed several times using the latest drivers. I guess I'll reinstall catalyst 4.12. The game hasn't crashed on me a single time with catalyst 4.12 installed.

P4 2.4GHz
1GB RAM
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT

 

[SkyVon]

Before going to 4.12 I want to make sure CoD 2 (Call of Duty 2) still works. Has anyone been able to play both games with 4.12?

I can't believe this problem wasn't detected during beta testing

Thanks!

 

[Kushan]

With the pathc know out, is it reall necessary to have the old drivers (Cat 4.12). Cant those of us using it go back to the newer drivers?

Kushan

 

[Otrebor]

Before going to 4.12 I want to make sure CoD 2 (Call of Duty 2) still works. Has anyone been able to play both games with 4.12?

I can't believe this problem wasn't detected during beta testing

Thanks!

CoD2 and Civ4 work perfectly fine with 4.12 on my PC (Civ4 was horrible crashlagfest on 5.10)

 

[SkyVon]

Where exactly on the ATI site can 4.12 be found? I am having trouble finding this file anywhere...other than Fileshack.

Thanks!

 

[SkyVon]

Found and installed 4.12...PROBLEM SOLVED! I can finally finish my saved game. This really should be a sticky.

Now to test 4.12 on other games (like COD 2).

 

[enchanter100]

works for me. I didn't have any crashes on 5.10 cept when I alt-tabbed or after loading a large map with 10+ civs (worked all the way up until saving and loading the game, went to crap after loading). Went back to 4.12 omega drivers and was able to load the game and playing right now!!!

 

[FullyCompletely]

We should all collectively pull down our pants and take a dump on patch 1.09.

For me at least, it fixes nothing, this after waiting almost a month for it.

 

[Pistolero]

I installed the 4.12 and then ran the unpak fix, and cleared cache. When I try to start civ IV I get an:
initialize renderer failed. Check directX installation, latest graphics drivers and graphics settings parameters:
width = 1024
height = 768\flags = 0x8
hwnd = 0x80476
adaptrid = 0
deviceid = 1
Help please!

(I could kind of play the game with patch 1.09 (but leaders would cause a freeze), so I decided to try a driver change. Using ATI Radeon 9000 card on a laptop.

 

[Pistolero]

After loading driver 4.12 I had the initialize renderer error (see previous post). I fixed this with the Unpak fix and going back to full screen mode and clearing cache.

For me the game is still unplayable. With patch 1.09 + driver 4.12 I can see the leaders now and the units, but the terrain looks pretty awful and the text gets covered by white blocks occasionally.

With patch 1.09 and driver 5.10 I can the the terrain beautifully but the units are missing (sometimes visible) except for their weapons [ is this the "cheshire cat" bug? ] and the PC freezes when another civilization leader is about to be displayed.

I have tried playing with the settings for the game and drivers (AGP off, low res, high performance) although there are so many options that I am sure I have not tried them all. If someone has the same config as me and can suggest a configuration, I am prepared for one more try. Otherwise I think I will have to wait for the next patch. I would be more than happy with unanimated units and leaders if that would allow the game to play! How about that option for the next patch?

 

[Fiontar]

I was having constant reboots caused by the game crashing before switching to the Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.97a (Catalyst 4.12), found in the archive section at http://www.omegadrivers.net/

All my graphics card settings are the standard default, no AGP off or any of the others tweaks people were suggesting.

I did follow the directions on the ATI site to manually uninstall and delete all the old ATI drivers/ files from my computer before installing the new ones. I used to use a program that was supposed to do that automatically, but I still found some of the things ATI recmmends getting rid of sticking around, so try the full manual method detailed by ATI.

The full unistall and reinstall should set anything you changed back to default settings.

The only thing I changed was to turn the VPU recovery feature off in the ATI control panel, just incase.

Oh, in my case this not only seems to have fixed the crashes, but the game looks and runs well so far.

 

[Viperace]

I love all the guys here...

Install Omega 4.12 on my Radeon9800pro... now I can play large world with smooth silky gameplay.

Thankssssssss

 

[Pistolero]

I gave the 4.12 driver another go. And yes it works. The performance is slow and the graphics are not as beautiful as with the 5.10 driver - BUT I have not had a crash yet. I have the white eyes feature on some leaders. This puts me in the category of playable, but still needing a further patch to be satisfied with the game performance.