Crash when Alt-Tab switching back from desktop

[RemoWilliams]

Sometimes, when I switch to the desktop to do something, then switch back, the game crashes. I can reproduce it fairly reliably if the game is on the start page (with the Single Player, Multiplayer, etc options). While playing a game it crashes less frequently, but does occasionally.

As long as I don't use Alt-Tab to switch to desktop, the game has been 100% reliable. Has anyone else run into this issue?

I usually just avoid doing that, but sometimes I hit the windows key by accident, which dumps me to my desktop (very annoying). Also, it is sort of a pain to have to save the game every time I want to switch to desktop real quick, and depending on the situation, it could be bad if I'm playing a HOF game (game crashes, therefore I must reload, therefore the submission is DQ'd).

I'm counting my blessings that I don't have the major stability/speed issues that others have (by the way, in the past when I've run into major issues with other games, the problem is invariably my own hardware at fault, and usually the memory - some of you might greatly benefit by testing with memtest86).

 

[crunch]

* Try playing the game in a window. More stable when switching applications.

* Make sure you're not running the memory saving option that suppresses normal Alt-Tab behavior. I don't remember what exactly it is, it was added with the patch 1.52.

* It should be possible to suppress / turn off the Alt-Tab and windows key functions. Google for "disable alt tab windows key windows xp".

 

[RemoWilliams]

*
* Make sure you're not running the memory saving option that suppresses normal Alt-Tab behavior. I don't remember what exactly it is, it was added with the patch 1.52.

Thanks! I'll try your suggestions, but could you be more specific about this one? I looked around but can't find an option that matches this one.

 

[BeefontheBone]

's in the .ini settings in your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 folder. It's off by default, so unless you enabled it it won't be that which is causing the problem. I'd suggest you definitely run the game in a window if you want to alt-tab a lot, make sure it's patched and make sure it's got enough memory available (and a nice big page file seems to help a lot).