This is all linked to the infamous "Civilization3.e.exe" for W2k and "CIVILIZATION3 caused an invalid page fault in..." for W98 error. When I use the editor, I get the Civilization3.e.exe error (I'm using W2k) randomly between two turns, usually around 300AD, and it keeps occuring there, not allowing me to continue. Recently I tried uninstalling everything and reinstalling, and not editing or downloading anything, including the patch. Eventually I had to quit the game I was playing to go eat dinner, and had gotten to around 1400BC. I saved the game, and then quit. When I quit a message came up that took up the whole screen and had a blue background with white writing that said:
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*** STOP:0x000000D1 (0xBFD97CD0, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xBFD97CD0) DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
*** Address BFD97CD0 base at BFD32000, DateStamp 3bc732a9 - es198xdl.sys
*** Address BFD97CD0 base at BFD32000, DateStamp 3bc732a9 - es198xdl.sys
Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group.
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This froze my computer, and I had to restart it. When I went back into the game and tried to load my save I got the DataIO error you're talking about. When I clicked "OK" to close it, all it did was ding and flash back up again. To get rid of it I opened up Task Manager and told it to end that task. Then the regular window came up saying it wasn't responding, but the title bar read:
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End Program - Civilization3.e
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So it referred to it as Civilization3.e, which would explain the "Civilization3.e.exe has caused an error" part. I later installed the patch, and the same thing happened, except I was able to click "OK" for the DataIO error window to close it, but then a Civilization III window came up saying:
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Load Error
ERROR READING FILE
"C:\Games\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\saves\Alexander of the Greeks, 1425 BC.SAV"
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I was able to close this too, but not to load my save. However, I was able to load the autosave for the beginning of the turn that I last saved it and play from there. So far on this game with no editor changes I have made it into the 500s AD, further than ever before with CivilizationIII. All I do is retire instead of quit after I save it, and I'm fine. One time at the beginning the full-screen error that freezes my computer came up after just saving, not quiting, but I was able to load the autosave for that turn and continue.
All this experimenting lead me to discover that "Civilization3.e" is a process that starts up along with Civilization III. If I end the process Civilization3.e with Task Manager then it closes the game as well, but if I end the game with Task Manager then the process Civilization3.e keeps running, and when I try to start the game again it goes to the loading screen and then just stops and goes back to Windows, so I have to end Civilization3.e before I can start the game again. I started a thread about it in the General forum for Civ3 to see if people who didn't have problems with the game also had this process running, and so far there have been mixed results. Dan Magaha said that it could be related to the SafeDisk copy protection and I should download the patch for that, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Here's a link to that thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15854
Here are the links to the other threads on this error:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7646
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12173