Demo's not launching

[Dark_Swordmaste]

I realise I should probably put things regarding the FULL game here, but I thought I'd try out the demo first as see if I like it, make my decision to buy or not. So far, no, simply because it's not running.

I just try and start it and it doesn't even load, it just gives me a stupid-ass, unhelpful Windows error message.


I'm not sure what's going on, I can't get a useful error message out of it or anything. Does anyone know a way to fix it?

I read that it has trouble with ATI (God damn them and their awful drivers!) but I recently had the latest drivers in Omega Format, and due to crashing with just about every game I own, I had to redowngrade. Anyway:

If anyone can help me out on this one, I'll love you for the next several minutes!

P4 2.6Ghz
1025MB RAM
Xtasy Radeon 9600SE 128MB
Audigy2

 

[Dark_Swordmaste]

I take it no one has an idea...

 

[VimesUK]

I read that it has trouble with ATI (God damn them and their awful drivers!) but I recently had the latest drivers in Omega Format

I never had any trouble with either of the two systems that I have got with an ATI card that was specific to the card or the drivers that I used, that was before and after the 1.09 patch.

, and due to crashing with just about every game I own, I had to redowngrade.

That could be indicative of a problem not just related to Civ4 that you have with your PC.
I have found that Civ 4 certainly stresses a PC's configuration much more than any other game on my system and so exposing any issues that might be there and yet other games do not seem to be sensitive to. That doesn't mean that the game is perfect but I really would be stress testing your PC first to ensure that things are ok.

Grab a copy of memtest86 and OCCT and then run those, let them loop for a few hours, to see if there are any problems noted. Then run 3D Mark 05, not for the sake of a score but for a Direct X 9c test for your setup.

Good luck

 

[Dark_Swordmaste]

No no, the GAMES weren't crashing, ATI's drivers were crashing. And Civ4 (demo) doesn't even launch! It doesn't even BEGIN to start up. It just crashes when I double-click it.

I'll try testing the hell out of it later, but it sounds like... Ugh... I'm just going to save the HD and drop the rest of this thing off a cliff.

 

[VimesUK]

My previous recommendations still apply, as you should be able to use the ATI drivers with no problem, although the cliff option sounds the better choice

BTW: You could remove the Omega drivers and then use Driver Cleaner Pro and then install the latest ATI 5.11 drivers, with the CCC, and take it from there. Whether it turns out to be related or not I would sort out the issue as to why you have a problem with the ATI drivers.

 

[Dark_Swordmaste]

The problem with the ATi drivers is that they SUCK!

It's well documented.

For example: Neverwinter Nights actually acknowledges an ATi problem and says they might patch it.

Several games do this too! Only a lot of them just leave the user on their own.

I'll try out the driver cleaning thing later on when I don't have two tons of homework. But thanks for the advice so far. Pray that it works!

 

[aaronwexler]

I managed to fix this problem. I just uninstalled the demo, dumped the unziped folder, and extracted it again and then reinstalled. Durring intstalation I also chose custom install but it didnt give me any custom options. Anyway after doing this the demo ran fine.