Crashing

[oteP]

Hello,
I have installed Civilization with 1.74 patch.
Game keeps crashing after 30 - 40 minutes and after first crash it's crashing every 5 minutes.
I tried installing Warlods + Newest Patch, but now it even sometimes crash at loading.. So it's more wierd like good. Now I am gonna get BTS and hoping that it may be fixed with it...
Sometimes it even finishes with blue screen and when windows start up, theres a message about critical fail etc.. You know..

Here's DxDiag

http://rapidshare.com/files/265430166/DxDiag.txt.html

Any clue what could help me? It's rather annoying..

Thank's for your help

 

[Zylornck Davis]

Sounds like somthing's getting hot. Your cpu or gpu is getting too warm from playing and you get an exception and crash. Make sure your heatsinks are attached properly and your fans are running right and fast enough. Blow the dust out of the machine, and ir you're over clocking, stop it until you get this fixed.

And you badly need more ram too.

EDIT: If this is a laptop its likely full of dust around the heatsink fan. Have it serviced by a pro.

 

[oteP]

Hello,

thank's for your post.

I had a bit overclocked procesor, so I took 100 MHZs back. (Alltho I had never a problem with it). It's summer, everything's hot - but what if. Coolers should be ok, I've done cleaning myself.

Also I installed BTS and patched it up to date.

Now I can say, for two days I haven't crashed yet and I can finally think, that Civ is still one of the best games I played.

 

[Zylornck Davis]

Yeah, everybody forgets over clocking in summer really stresses the machine unless you got real good cooling or a cool room. If youre pushing it hard, even a temp increase of 3 -4 degrees in the room can cause instability and put it over the edge I'd run a prime95 test at the new clock speed for an hour or two and see if it's really stable myself. Might be an idea to crank up your fan if it isn't maxed out already. More noise but it's better than rebooting and crashing all the time.

 

[arkham4269]

I have an odd crash happening now every time I try to play. I'm running an older HP laptop w/XP. Normally when I get crashes, it's late in the game and it's simply my old computer can't handle the graphics. Turning off the music and only playing on small maps tend to keep this from happening.

Lately, however, my system up and did something weird. My MS-Media player and GOM player stopped working and when I load Civ (vanilla or mod, doesn't matter) the game will crash to a black screen that forces a hard reboot. If I have music enabled, the music continues to play. Right before the crash I see ghost images I've seen a few times before when I had some graphic problems. They looked like large triangles pointing at the unit. Then there is a 'LSD' mix of colors and then the crash. This crash happens even before I can load a game.

I've updated everything I can think of, cleaned my machine, updated every driver. I can't uninstall and reload due to having a busted internal drive. I was able to get my Media player back up and running but even after two re-installs my GOM player still only plays files with a black screen w/sound.

So I don't know if I'm having a video card problem or what. What's odd is I can still play PopCap games Plants vs Zombies (the only game I have on that my machine that doesn't require a CD to play) and while at the higher levels it slows down a bit, it has never crashed.

Ideas?

 

[ori]

this sounds like a overheating graphics card - does the computer make any louder than usual noises when this happens?

 

[arkham4269]

this sounds like a overheating graphics card - does the computer make any louder than usual noises when this happens?

Well it did get up to 108 here a few weeks ago so I'm wondering did my graphics card get cooked even now when it's back down to normal PNW temperatures? I mean this type of HP laptop tends to run hot anyway.

As for noise, no it doesn't and this crash can happen when I turn on the computer after being off all night so there hasn't been any time for it to really heat up.

 

[ori]

actually the heat is being produced by the game using the graphics card processor and memory a lot (and inefficiently) - which can lead to overheating if the card is getting to the end of its life time and/or the ventilation is blocked (dust can do that)...
another possibility is just a plain dying card - in any case it really sounds like a hardware problem.

Civ4 really stresses some cards and is not the most efficient 3D game out there by any means.

 

[Zylornck Davis]

If its a laptop dust is always a problem. they get pretty disgusting in there pretty fast. Just don't try to take it apart yourself. If you dont know what your doing you can really wreck the thing in a hurry.

 

[arkham4269]

If its a laptop dust is always a problem. they get pretty disgusting in there pretty fast. Just don't try to take it apart yourself. If you don't know what your doing you can really wreck the thing in a hurry.

Well perhaps I should have it professionally cleaned. I know one of my internal fans doesn't work although I always use it on one of those stands that sucks the hot air away.

That being said, I did take this computer to Afghanistan for a year so who knows whats in it!

However, I just don't understand why it's just Civ that crashes and not other programs. Of course if I had a working external or internal drive, I could test other games.