Failed to Initialize Renderer

FrequencySurfer said:
For your desktop 9800, what drivers are you using? Catalyst? Omega? And what version?

My laptop 9800 is running Omega (latest version out just in the past few days) - not what you are asking but may be helpful to know.
 
Try this people: right click on your desktop, select properties. Turn the colordepth all the way up to 32 bits. If this doesnt help, try setting the monitor refresh frequency behind the advanced button. It might work.
 
Since it seems to be ATI video cards that are the problem, a solution would be to drive a different set of drivers, and I don't mean just a roll-back.

I suggest installing Omega Drivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Win Xp/2k:
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=14


Since these are no official ATI drivers, use at your own risk.(I don't have the game yet so I can't test them out, but I only use OmegaDrivers on my system)
 
Kinjiru said:
On the desktop machine (the one where cIV works), I am running the latest Catalyst drivers (downloaded them 2 days ago).

On the laptop, using the latest drivers that Dell has made available. I am just really suprised, as B&W2 runs extremely well on the same laptop.

Kinjiru, since you seem to be one of the few lucky reports of success with ATI card... perhaps you could list all of your specs and you config.ini ? If you can peal yourself away from the game?

It may help us or tech support pinpoint the problem.
 
I just installed the latest OMEGA drivers for my Radeon x700, but the game still refused to work. Stubborn, it is.

A much older driver version seems to be the only solution. Anyone have any links to places with OLD drivers (4.x)?
 
Zoomba said:
I get the distinct feeling that this game didn't go through very rigorous quality assurance testing.

I'm wondering the same thing...I posted my specs in a separate post in the Bug Reps section.

OS: MS Windows XP Pro (5.1, Build 2600)
System Manufacturer: Dell
System Model: Dimension XPSGEN5
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20 GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page file: 357MB used, 3580MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

No problems found with DX in dxdiag.

Video card: Radeon X850 XT PE

I really don't see how this could be a card or drivers issue...
 
What format are the movies in? I have heard of similar issues with older games that required QuickTime of a specific version... Wrong version, no game.

While it does seem to be an ATI issue, I just wanted to add a possibility.
 
Lahdoz said:
What format are the movies in? I have heard of similar issues with older games that required QuickTime of a specific version... Wrong version, no game.

While it does seem to be an ATI issue, I just wanted to add a possibility.


Interesting idea. It could be a problem loading one of the opening sequences ( often in some "movie" format )and the game just craps the bed.
 
Regardless of whether or not radeon users have gotten the game to work, the fact is that all users who are getting this error (those who have posted on several internet forums, anyway) are using ATI products. Until we see nvidia users having the same sort of problem, this is the only thing we have to go by.

ADDENDUM-

I disabled the opening movies and had it go DIRECTLY into the game (theres an option for it, enable it using the .ini file and add quickstart = 1), and it gave the same problem.
 
The omega drivers are based on the core ati drivers: so that definitely is not the solution if it even is a driver issue. Look at the colordepth of your desktop, thats more likely to be it.
 
same problem: 9600xt 256Mb

I was suspicious when I heard that they had moved the release date up about 3 weeks due to legal problems with some of their other games (GTA).
I guess they wanted to get some money in quick or something.
Anyway, they obviously did not test this game properly.


By the way, I was running on older drivers from around june and the game did
not run and then I updated to the latest drivers and of course it doesn't run.
 
Well I caved and went and bought a new machine that didn't include an ati Card......

1 geforce 7800 gt oc $450
2 19" LCD Monitors $900
1 Sony Vaio $1000
Playing civ4 on release day... Priceless
 
Moosebox said:
Since it seems to be ATI video cards that are the problem, a solution would be to drive a different set of drivers, and I don't mean just a roll-back.

I suggest installing Omega Drivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Win Xp/2k:
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=14


Since these are no official ATI drivers, use at your own risk.(I don't have the game yet so I can't test them out, but I only use OmegaDrivers on my system)

A consensus is growing that the problem is not the latest drivers. I and others here have used the latest Omega as well as the past few Omega versions going back (full install and uninstall). And then trying the latest ATI ones to boot. And to no avail...

So something else is going on...
 
magnusmarcus said:
Well I caved and went and bought a new machine that didn't include an ati Card......

1 geforce 7800 gt oc $450
2 19" LCD Monitors $900
1 Sony Vaio $1000
Playing civ4 on release day... Priceless

So you only needed to spend extra $2350 to play Civ IV, not bad at all :goodjob:
 
Aedwild said:
A consensus is growing that the problem is not the latest drivers. I and others here have used the latest Omega as well as the past few Omega versions going back (full install and uninstall). And then trying the latest ATI ones to boot. And to no avail...

So something else is going on...

hmm...well thats no good. Knowing my luck with computers I'll have the same problem in a few hours when I finally get the game. I'm looking forward to that! :crazyeye:
 
I dunno, I just hope they don't come out with some lame workaround, cuz there's no way I wanna play Civ bad enough to jack my CPU up for everything else.
 
invoke41 said:
The omega drivers are based on the core ati drivers: so that definitely is not the solution if it even is a driver issue. Look at the colordepth of your desktop, thats more likely to be it.

These simple suggestions have been tried and failed. Many of us have tried changing Colordepth -- and that is not the solution here. If you really want to help, take a look at the error logs generated by the game that others have posted on these boards and work from there. :)
 
I don't have the game yet, but I have an suggestion:

In the error message it just says 'failed to initialize renderer', so I thought that it might be the video renderer that failed initialize - and not the 3d renderer. So try this:
Download one of the many video codec packages that is out there, they should contain all the most common video codec's (google 'video codec'). Also restart when you have installed the codec - and run civ IV again....
(or even better, if you know what video-renderer civ IV uses, try to get some kind of codec from that company... and follow the same procedure...)

Tell me if it works...
 
I hope this is something that gets fixed with a hot patch or something... If I have to wait a month for a full-blown bug fix patch, I'll be pretty irked.

Worst thing is, if it comes to that I can't even return the game :(
 
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