After spending nearly 3 weeks trying to get this game to work on my pc I've finally done it and it a very strange way.
This is my PC (report from dxdiag)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) (2600.xpclient.010817-1148)
System Manufacturer: VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model: VT8363
BIOS: VIA694 - 42302e31
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor, MMX, 3DNow, ~1202MHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 159MB used, 1089MB available
Primary File System: NTFS
DirectX Version: DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0810)
------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: The file 3dfxvs.dll is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: Voodoo 3 (HoE 1.00)
Manufacturer: 3dfx Interactive, Inc.
Chip type: 3dfx Voodoo 3
Display Memory: 16.0 MB
Current Mode: 1600 x 1200 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: AOC SPECTRUM 7Nlr
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Driver Name: 3dfxvs.dll
Driver Version: 5.00.2195.0232 (English)
Driver Signed: No
WHQL Date Stamp: None
-------------
Sound Devices
-------------
Description: SB Live! Wave Device
Driver Name: emu10k1m.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.01.3300 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Signed: Yes
HW Accel Level: Full
My Problem
--------------
Game played fine for a random period of time and then the PC hung. I heard a high pitch tone comming from my speakers. Could not CAD (ctrl-alt-del) to kill the program, I had to power off my PC. Sometimes during the game I would get windows messages telling me I had run low on virtual memory. At the time I only had 256mb of ram and a 512mb page file.
---------------
Does this sound familiar anyone ?
What I tried to fix it
-------------------------
When I 1st had this problem I was running Windows 2000 SP2
Checked my fonts, only ever had about 100 so that wasn't the problem.
I changed my Hardware Acceleration on the display tab down to the second notch from the left. This in turn caused me to get a black screen error when I first loaded Civ3. To fix this you just delete the intro.bik movie.
I tried changed my screen res to 800x600x32, 800x600x16, 1024x768x16 and 640x480x16/32 and this didn't help.
I reinstalled the game, this made no difference, I tried installing it on another partition. Again this did nothing.
I downloaded the latest graphics card drivers along with newer SB Live drivers. Nothing, still crashed
I looked at my monitor drivers. They seemed fine, windows detects my monitor fine so I left it.
I closed just about everything I could before I ran the game. I loaded up task manager and killed everything else I could. This didn't help
I found I had some Lexmark printer stuff loaded which I couldn't kill so I uninstalled that along with all real player things running.
Reading that some people had tried cracking the game I did the same thing. After doing this I found I could play for around 8 hours before it crashed (or so I though) it seemed this was a one of exception.
When I got the windows errors saying I had run out of virtual memory I hit CAD and checked, I had about 95% swap space and about 80Mb of RAM free. Weird, never did work that one out.
I finally installed this game on my girlfriends PC, this is a Celeron 433 running 128Mb ram and windows 98. She is one of those types who downloads and installs lots of things and has like 50 icons on the system tray at any one time. She played the game fine. She never closed any running programs. She could leave the game on over night, alt-tab out of it to ICQ and MSN people. I wanted to scream, her pc was pretty crap compared to mine yet it ran perfectly on hers and not mine. I decided I must have some hardware problems
I bought another 256Mb RAM (was dirt cheap anyway) this didn't fix the problem.
Maybe I had a bad install of Windows 2000, so I re-installed it. Updated all my drivers and installed Civ3. Did it fix it ? No
Ok, after reading the forums some more it seemed like everyone who had major problems with the game had either
1. VIA Chipset
2. SB Product
3. Windows 2000
Well, I my girlfriends PC had none of those and it worked fine so I got rid of Windows 2000 and installed Windows XP. Now the install had picked up all my hardware and installed the "correct" drivers. I installed Civ3 to test it, nope failed. I ran through the list I've just typed out so to see if anything would work, did it ? nope.
I was really annoyed now. Its been 3 weeks and the longest I ever played the game for is about 8 hours while my girlfriend sits next to me playing a game thats been running continusly on her machine for close to 3 days without any reboots or problems.
Finally while looking for some updated drivers for my Voodoo 3 card for windows XP one of my friends sent my a link to a neat set. Upon downloading them I found out they were written by a 15 year old kid and to install them required a bit of effort (deleting a load of windows/system files and changing some ini files about) After having windows complain like crazy over the new drivers (some crap about them not being certified by Microsoft? Is that a joke?) anyway, they worked. THIS fixed my problem. Some drivers made by a 15yo genius kid. I can do everythng anyone tells you not to do and the game works fine. I can have Symantec running a defrag on my drive C and Norton Virus scanning drive C and still play the game (yes its damn slow but it doesn't crash)
--------------------------------------------------
Morale of the story
If someone says "Update your drivers" they might not mean use certified drivers from the product manufacturer
Anyway, just thought I'd share it with those of you who can be bothered to read it all
Anyone want the drivers ?
A.
This is my PC (report from dxdiag)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) (2600.xpclient.010817-1148)
System Manufacturer: VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model: VT8363
BIOS: VIA694 - 42302e31
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor, MMX, 3DNow, ~1202MHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 159MB used, 1089MB available
Primary File System: NTFS
DirectX Version: DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0810)
------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: The file 3dfxvs.dll is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: Voodoo 3 (HoE 1.00)
Manufacturer: 3dfx Interactive, Inc.
Chip type: 3dfx Voodoo 3
Display Memory: 16.0 MB
Current Mode: 1600 x 1200 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: AOC SPECTRUM 7Nlr
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Driver Name: 3dfxvs.dll
Driver Version: 5.00.2195.0232 (English)
Driver Signed: No
WHQL Date Stamp: None
-------------
Sound Devices
-------------
Description: SB Live! Wave Device
Driver Name: emu10k1m.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.01.3300 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Signed: Yes
HW Accel Level: Full
My Problem
--------------
Game played fine for a random period of time and then the PC hung. I heard a high pitch tone comming from my speakers. Could not CAD (ctrl-alt-del) to kill the program, I had to power off my PC. Sometimes during the game I would get windows messages telling me I had run low on virtual memory. At the time I only had 256mb of ram and a 512mb page file.
---------------
Does this sound familiar anyone ?
What I tried to fix it
-------------------------
When I 1st had this problem I was running Windows 2000 SP2
Checked my fonts, only ever had about 100 so that wasn't the problem.
I changed my Hardware Acceleration on the display tab down to the second notch from the left. This in turn caused me to get a black screen error when I first loaded Civ3. To fix this you just delete the intro.bik movie.
I tried changed my screen res to 800x600x32, 800x600x16, 1024x768x16 and 640x480x16/32 and this didn't help.
I reinstalled the game, this made no difference, I tried installing it on another partition. Again this did nothing.
I downloaded the latest graphics card drivers along with newer SB Live drivers. Nothing, still crashed
I looked at my monitor drivers. They seemed fine, windows detects my monitor fine so I left it.
I closed just about everything I could before I ran the game. I loaded up task manager and killed everything else I could. This didn't help
I found I had some Lexmark printer stuff loaded which I couldn't kill so I uninstalled that along with all real player things running.
Reading that some people had tried cracking the game I did the same thing. After doing this I found I could play for around 8 hours before it crashed (or so I though) it seemed this was a one of exception.
When I got the windows errors saying I had run out of virtual memory I hit CAD and checked, I had about 95% swap space and about 80Mb of RAM free. Weird, never did work that one out.
I finally installed this game on my girlfriends PC, this is a Celeron 433 running 128Mb ram and windows 98. She is one of those types who downloads and installs lots of things and has like 50 icons on the system tray at any one time. She played the game fine. She never closed any running programs. She could leave the game on over night, alt-tab out of it to ICQ and MSN people. I wanted to scream, her pc was pretty crap compared to mine yet it ran perfectly on hers and not mine. I decided I must have some hardware problems
I bought another 256Mb RAM (was dirt cheap anyway) this didn't fix the problem.
Maybe I had a bad install of Windows 2000, so I re-installed it. Updated all my drivers and installed Civ3. Did it fix it ? No
Ok, after reading the forums some more it seemed like everyone who had major problems with the game had either
1. VIA Chipset
2. SB Product
3. Windows 2000
Well, I my girlfriends PC had none of those and it worked fine so I got rid of Windows 2000 and installed Windows XP. Now the install had picked up all my hardware and installed the "correct" drivers. I installed Civ3 to test it, nope failed. I ran through the list I've just typed out so to see if anything would work, did it ? nope.
I was really annoyed now. Its been 3 weeks and the longest I ever played the game for is about 8 hours while my girlfriend sits next to me playing a game thats been running continusly on her machine for close to 3 days without any reboots or problems.
Finally while looking for some updated drivers for my Voodoo 3 card for windows XP one of my friends sent my a link to a neat set. Upon downloading them I found out they were written by a 15 year old kid and to install them required a bit of effort (deleting a load of windows/system files and changing some ini files about) After having windows complain like crazy over the new drivers (some crap about them not being certified by Microsoft? Is that a joke?) anyway, they worked. THIS fixed my problem. Some drivers made by a 15yo genius kid. I can do everythng anyone tells you not to do and the game works fine. I can have Symantec running a defrag on my drive C and Norton Virus scanning drive C and still play the game (yes its damn slow but it doesn't crash)
--------------------------------------------------
Morale of the story
If someone says "Update your drivers" they might not mean use certified drivers from the product manufacturer
Anyway, just thought I'd share it with those of you who can be bothered to read it all
Anyone want the drivers ?
A.
