Constant Crashing to Desktop After a Few Turns in Win7

[JavierP3]

Hey everybody,

I've been working on this problem for over a week; I've read the forums extensively, but I can't find a similar solution for win7 in the crash reports. The v1.74 game is crashing to the desktop after a few turns. Sometimes this is preceded by white jagged lines running across the screen beforehand, but usually it just crashes at some random point. I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and it used to run great for me on XP. Solutions that I have tried:

1. Reinstalling game (twice)
2. Reinstalling Windows 7
3. Reinstalling DirectX to latest (more times than I can count)
4. Updating video card [GeForce 8500 GT]
5. Rolling back video driver
6. Uninstalling card & reinstalling
7. Running game as administrator with Windows XP SP2 compatibility [been doing this the whole time]
8. Closing all other programs and windows components (still crashing)
9. Running the game in windowed mode
10. Running it with the graphics turned way down, no anti-aliasing

I'm not running any mods.

I run a good PC with 2GB ram, a strong Athlon processor--the machine should be able to run Civ4 three times over. DiagDx and my last two crash reports are attached. Any help would be appreciated. The game crashes usually within the first 5-10 minutes of it being played. I suspect it's something to do with the new video drivers, but I don't know a way to test that w/o installing a very old out-of-date driver, and that doesn't seem like good computing to me.

Crash reports:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civilization4.exe
Application Version: 1.7.4.0
Application Timestamp: 464bc30c
Fault Module Name: nvd3dum.dll
Fault Module Version: 8.17.11.9745
Fault Module Timestamp: 4bb7dd53
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 002798e1
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civilization4.exe
Application Version: 1.7.4.0
Application Timestamp: 464bc30c
Fault Module Name: D3D9.DLL
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bd9a9
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00025a2c
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0062
Additional Information 2: 0062bf5e85f46773c75fee65c55f578e
Additional Information 3: 483d
Additional Information 4: 483d8a0c2655ccf27fd91cc5b5476ee0

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Fault Module Name: nvd3dum.dll <-- Nvidia driver

Fault Module Name: D3D9.DLL <-- DirectX 9 DLL

It looks like your video card is choking on something, or there is a DirectX corruption.

Or perhaps your video card or processor is overheating. Try a program like Speedfan and GPU-Z to get the temperatures of your system and video card, respectively, and make sure that your cooling fans are actually turning, and not clogged with goop.

 

[JavierP3]

Yeah, the DirectX/Nivida was my thought, too. They both are updated to the latest and have been reinstalled. The temp on my computer is a cool 25 C, so I don't think that's it. Thanks, though.

 

[Furiey]

You say your DirectX is updated to the latest, do you mean DirectX11 or 9c?

If you have not updated your DirectX 9c (the version Civ needs) try installing this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

 

[JavierP3]

Both; I have both. I uninstalled the graphics card, and I reinstalled it since my first post; no luck.

 

[Furiey]

Try fiddling with the in-game graphics settings, anti-aliasing off and reducing settings generally.

 

[JavierP3]

Already did that, thanks though. It's running on low graphics, anti-aliasing is off, and most animations are turned off.

 

[Furiey]

Do you have 2 graphics cards in your PC? If not it's being reported twice in your dxdiag results file.

You're also running Win 7 64 with only 2MB memory which is the minimum requirement for the 64 bit version. Out of that memory the grpahics card(s) are sharing 767MB or 1534 MB if there are 2 which could possibly leave only 514 MB for Windows and programs. Could it be a memory issue?

 

[JavierP3]

I think the video cards that you're seeing are my two monitors. I disabled one of them, but the game is still crashing.

Memory? Maybe? 2GB not enough for Civ though? The video card has 512 MB of video memory.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Yeah, the DirectX/Nivida was my thought, too. They both are updated to the latest and have been reinstalled. The temp on my computer is a cool 25 C, so I don't think that's it. Thanks, though.

I meant the temperature of your graphics card and CPU under load. (When you're playing Civ)

Also, with 64 bit Windows, 2 GB is the bare minimum to run Windows. I believe Furiey's point was that even though your graphics card has 512 MB of RAM, it still takes a chunk out of your memory, as the video memory is mapped into RAM. It's only used if the card itself runs out of memory, but it still eats into your available RAM, in effect, making Civ memory starved.

 

[Richardc269]

I agree with this. You should get an extra couple gigs of RAM into that computer. 4 gigs should be plenty enough. Or maybe try getting a total of 6 gigs in the machine.