Crash On New Game, But Can Load Saved Game OK

ElCortez

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 2, 2006
Messages
3
Hello,

I have an HP Pavilion zt3000 notebook with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 (32MB) graphics card. When I first installed the game, everything worked fine. I started a game and played it all the way through with no problems at the highest graphical settings. However, after that I was no longer able to start a new game.

What happens is that once the loading screen with the movie playing and Spock talking shows the "Play Game" button, clicking the button closes the movie screen and the whole screen goes black. The only things visible are the date, event messages regarding me entering the game, and the portrait of one of my units that is off screen. For about 5-10 seconds I can move my mouse (I can't interact with anything), but after that even my mouse cursor goes away and my system is locked up. Before I click the "Play Game" button in the movie screen, I can still Alt-Tab out of the game, but after I do click it, Alt-Tab does nothing.

I have tried the latest drivers from HP, as well as the Omega driver version 2.5.97a recommended for my video card here on the forums. Note that the newer Omega and Catalyst drivers don't work on my laptop - the video gets scrambled. Every time I've re-installed the game as well as when I installed the Omega driver, I've been able to start one game successfully. After that, it locks up when I start another.

A curious thing is that when I try to load saved games, it works every time. I've created saved games on the very first turn and have been able to load them no problem. So what's the difference between starting a new game and loading an existing one?

Has anybody else had this happen to them? BTW - I've emailed TAKE 2 and haven't heard anything else from them since their initial request for the DirectX system info file (which I sent to them).

Thanks,
Curt

PS - For reference, I've attached my DxDiag file.
 

Attachments

Nice Laptop, good processor, but your problem is the 9200 card. Its not inside the hardware requirements for Civ IV. You have 32Mb on the graphics card - you need a minimum of 64Mb, but with the 9200, even that is going to be slow, the 9200 is a low end card that will struggle with current true 3D games

Go through the link below carefully, reducing as much as you can the load on the video card
Radeon 9200 Problems
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3564298#post3564298

The link below is the game hardware requirements
http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_msr.htm

One measure that has worked for a lot of folks - due to the leftovers of many attempts at getting it going - is a TOTAL purge of Civ IV, see the link below.

Clean Uninstall
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=152620

I doubt you will get a reply from their support guys, as you do not meet the minimum hardware needs of the game. In the long term you need to upgrade the video card,I dont know that laptop, talk to HP, but without a card upgrade its unlikely to perform properly, and in the medium to long term with get worse as further demands are made on the hardware. This will also be increasingly true for other games as they follow the Civ route down the road of producing true 3D games

Regards
Zy
 
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