Does anyone had problems with C3C recently?

[Zenon_pt]

Since 16th of this mounth, I can't play C3C. After 5 min. the computer restards. I don't know what is happening.

Anyone had this problem? Or I have a bug that i can't see?

 

[starrider]

Since 16th of this mounth, I can't play C3C. After 5 min. the computer restards. I don't know what is happening.

Anyone had this problem? Or I have a bug that i can't see?

Ok, there really isn't enough info in your post to troubleshoot, so here are some general suggestions:

This sounds like it might heat problem on your CPU and/or a faulty power supply. You get a reboot because your computer is overheating and this only occurs under processor load (for 5 minutes.) Check CPU temperatures, airflow, etc. Summer is rapidly approaching. Do you have air conditioning? If you aren't running a temperature monitor and/or alarm system, an overheating system can cause random reboots.

As far as the power supply goes...how old is it? Is it a name brand? Random reboots can also be a symptom of your power supply being near death.

As far as software goes (IMO, these are less likely to cause your problem):

1) Run antivirus and defrag your hard drive

2) Pull up your task manager if you are in 2k or XP (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC). Compare the memory in use to the total physical memory in system. If the memory in use is higher than memory you know is in the system, you are swapping. Since this is a relatiively new problem, check the memory uses of each process and see if something besides civilization is eating up your memory. You might have a worm.

I think what you are describing is a hardware problem, but, as I dont have any more information, I hope this helps.

 

[Bertilsson]

Don't defrag!
A fragmented HD may slow disk operations down but it doesn't make your computer reboot.
Otherwise good advice from starrider.

 

[starrider]

Don't defrag!
A fragmented HD may slow disk operations down but it doesn't make your computer reboot.
Otherwise good advice from starrider.

Uhh...sometimes a messed up or fragmented hard disk can cause random issues. Even if it isn't the cause...it's a good idea to run scandisk/checkdisk then defrag. This will correct errors then you can defrag to speed things up.

Should have said that first....however there isn't any problem with defragging...it won't hurt.

 

[Aristos]

One single and simple word:

Sasser.

Check for the Sasser virus. That is your problem.

 

[Rik Meleet]

My odds: 95% Sasser-virus, 5% CPU-heating.
What is not consistent with Sasser: the timeframe (but new variants are quickly spawned).
What is not consistent with CPU-heating: after the rebooting your PC runs again for some time.

Powersupply is rubbish: it doesn't happen so frequently. Perhaps a motherboard, but this sounds so much like software-instability that (besides a faulty heatsink or CPU) no hardware qualifies for the cause of this.

Conclusion: (sasser) virus.

 

[starrider]

My odds: 95% Sasser-virus, 5% CPU-heating.
What is not consistent with Sasser: the timeframe (but new variants are quickly spawned).
What is not consistent with CPU-heating: after the rebooting your PC runs again for some time.

Powersupply is rubbish: it doesn't happen so frequently. Perhaps a motherboard, but this sounds so much like software-instability that (besides a faulty heatsink or CPU) no hardware qualifies for the cause of this.

Conclusion: (sasser) virus.

Power supply happens more than you might think. What they don't tell you when you buy a new pc is that most power supplies are too underpowered for your pc if you ever upgrade...ie put more hard drives in or more cdroms. I have had more than my share of power supplies dying.

CPU overheating IS consistant because the system only reboots when under load. After rebooting, it runs fun until you start maxing out the processor with a game. Most times under idle your CPU isn't taxed that much.

I won't claim that any of this is the problem, but you can't arbitrarily rule anything out until you actually try it with his PC. Trouble shooting is a taxing process where you try each thing one by one. Everything I posted was a general rule of thumb that you can seek for general areas to look.

Power supply issues are well documented on tech sites everywhere. Most people run too small of a power supply once they upgrade their components. I've seen stability problems disappear when I put in a higher quality/more wattage power supply. Just FYI.

 

[DJMGator13]

I have personally replaced 1 power supply on my home computer and 2 at work within the last year. So power supply could be an issue.

A general caution on the Sasser issue is that the adware people are now using the same port access that Sasser exploits to load their adware software. I have had that happen to 2 differenct machines in the past 2 days. So make sure you have patched for Sasser from Microsoft and run a good firewall program. I turn the alerts on in my McAfee firewall program last night and I got almost a dozen attemts to gain access to port 65504? (the one that Sasser exploits) in a half hour.

 

[GR8Madmax]

Starrider hit it right on the head.

It is also possible that his heatsink fan might be dead, which is causing the CPU to overheat. There is a utility called SpeedFan that you can run under windows to see system, cpu & hard drive temps. It's a small but useful program to find out if it's indeed the cpu that's causing the problem. You can find it over here:

www.almico.com

 

[jimkirk]

my computer acting funny too but i cant pinpoint it i did numerous virus scans and scandisk and they all come back clean .. but i had my puter eboot itself once. and anotehr time i got a error about not having a proper driver but it doesnt say to what device and as far as i know all my drivers are up to date.. anotehr error shows soemthing about a memory dump or minidump .. basicly my system starts up quick and after a few minutes it slows to a crawl and goes from a free 400 mb ram to 0 free ram for 2-3 minutes or so then it runs fine for a while then again slows to a crawl for about 2-3 minutes

 

[starrider]

my computer acting funny too but i cant pinpoint it i did numerous virus scans and scandisk and they all come back clean .. but i had my puter eboot itself once. and anotehr time i got a error about not having a proper driver but it doesnt say to what device and as far as i know all my drivers are up to date.. anotehr error shows soemthing about a memory dump or minidump .. basicly my system starts up quick and after a few minutes it slows to a crawl and goes from a free 400 mb ram to 0 free ram for 2-3 minutes or so then it runs fine for a while then again slows to a crawl for about 2-3 minutes

Your system is swapping a lot (probably.) You don't have enough main memory so it is using the vitual memory swap file on your hard disk. This is considerably slower than main memory. On huge maps with all civs enabled, I can easily spike to 900MB+ memory in use. As I only have 512 megs, this degrades performance considerably. I can even cook dinner between turns or do something else. Ahh the good old days of PC gaming are back

When your system slows to a crawl, bring up the task manager. (CNTRL-ALT-ESC in Windows 2k / XP) and look at your memory usage. It's in the bottom corner of the task manager. Compare what is in use to what you know is actually physically in your machine.

Civ isn't as much of a CPU hog as it is a memory hog. That and the fact I think there is a slight memory leak in it.

Good luck

 

[jimkirk]

i reformated and its fine now i have 512 memory ram but i might add more

 

[DJMGator13]

I can even cook dinner between turns or do something else. Ahh the good old days of PC gaming are back

I used this as an excuse to finally upgrade my "old" P3 733mhz machine to a nice new P4 2.8ghz with 1 gig of PC3200 memory. I don't play too many huge maps, but it cut an almost 5 minutes between turn done to a little over a minute and that was mostly due to having the movement animations turned on.

 

[jimkirk]

whatever problem i had did not show up in any virus scanner from 4 different brands
so it may have been a trojan whatever it is its gone now.. after the format however i forgot to backup all my digital pictures dumb me ...do i still want to use film?lol

 

[Tweedledum]

I have a different problem: that occasionally the game just stops responding (and shows "not responding" on CTRL-ALT-DEL).
This happened a lot when I first got C3C and I thought I'd solved it, but every so often it comes back - its happened 3 times today having not happened at all for 2-3 months! It drives me nuts when it happens because I can't see any reason for it, I'm not doing anything differently to normal...

Edit: make that 4 times today... And always there's this task called "~e5d141" running which I never see any other time - what the hell is it?

 

[DJMGator13]

@Tweedledum - Try freeing up some of your system resources. Close all other programs and if your playing in single-player mode try turning off your antivirus software (disconnect your modem first).

 

[Tweedledum]

I have turned off the anti-virus software (that was the "fix"). Unplugging the modem is a thought, but the strange thing is that everything yesterday was the same as everything is today, but...

 

[DJMGator13]

You don't actually have to unplug the modem. I was just trying to warn against being connected to the internet without the antivirus running.

I have a cable modem with a continous connection so whenever I turn my antivirus off I will also unplug (turn off) my modem.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

a quick web search for ~e5d141 gives results that imply it may be related to the copy protection.

 

[Laughing Gull]

its the Sasser worm.

end of thread.