Freeze/Crash/Reboot

[Raider62]

Did you read this whole thread or just post here at the end?

Yes some people crash who don't have BFG 6800's. That is not the issue here in this thread... The crash we experience is unique to the BFG 6800 which you would know had you read the whole thread...

 

[Rellik69]

Yes I read the whole thread. What you are experiencing is the unique way 6800 card/driver handles an error condition. Other cards/drivers may handle the condition totally different. So my point is that maybe BFG tech support can fix the way your card handles the condition so that it doesnt lock up, but if the root cause of the problems is due to code in the 1.52 patch, you will still have game crashing issues as others of us experience with other cards.

I do not have a BFG 6800, I have 2 other cards both of which will crash in a huge game sometime between 30 mins or several hours. So are you saying that there are separate issues with both those hardware kits?

 

[Raider62]

I have seen a lot of fixes for your ATI cards... Have you tried any of them???

I am not relying on BFG to fix this situation. I am however relying on Nvidia or Fireaxis to fix it. Which should be in the next patch or driver update.

I dont know anything about your crash. All I know is what has been discovered in this thread relating to the random crash/freeze/reboot that occurs with the 6800... Our (all BFG 6800 GT OC owners) crashes are EXACTLY the same. I dont know what your crash is like because you get way to technical... Try describing what happens instead of what you think happened...

If you havent you should go read the ATI threads and see if any of that stuff fixes your problem.

 

[punkkidca]

Just to let you know i have a 6800 gt oc doing the same thing as all of you..so you can add me to the list of angry gamers. Does anyone who works at firaxis even look at these forums? Fix the problem guys, it's been like 3 months since i've bought the game and I havn't been able to play it for more than 10 min at a time!!!

 

[Raider62]

Just to let you know i have a 6800 gt oc doing the same thing as all of you..so you can add me to the list of angry gamers. Does anyone who works at firaxis even look at these forums? Fix the problem guys, it's been like 3 months since i've bought the game and I havn't been able to play it for more than 10 min at a time!!!

Yes, 6 weeks ago Thamer (head programmer/developer/whatever) came into this thread and promised to look into it. Havent heard squat from him since....

BFG Tech support acknowledged a problem and said it was being looked into...

Anyones guess whether they will fix our problem, its been so long now I am starting to have my doubts...

 

[Melhisedek]

Well I too have 6800GT but mine is Gainward one. Other than that I just CTD no errors no garbled images, no hard freezes, just CTD. I'll try to revert drivers tomorrow after work (have 4 hours to sleep)

I would gladly give my left kidney for game working on my rig

 

[Melhisedek]

Oki well after 5 more hours of fiddling and troubleshooting I'm at loss here really. Once I got some "bad memory allocation" error before crashing and that was it.

Checked the logs after last crash and only fail/error I can see is this

"RESMGR: Texture PlayerColor01.tga failed to load
RESMGR: Texture PlayerColor02.tga failed to load"

no idea if that got it to crash but here it is.

Well what I would like to know is how many of you got the game working without crashes if any? Also we could try to point out some irregular stuff about our rigs and see if we can see connection...

Well I have
- nforce3 board MSI Neo2 Platinum.
- I have game installed on E: rather than on C:
- I've tried different drivers but no go
- I have PCI Audio card Audigy with latest drivers
- Turned off autosaving still nothing
- Cry myself to sleep for not being to play this one

 

[punkkidca]

-Asus A7N8X-E Delux Motherboard
-AMD Athlon 3200
-sound blaster live-all updated drivers tryed swithing to onboard nvidia with updated drivers.
-2x512mb Kingston Hyper X Ram
-BFG 6800 GT OC=all updated drivers, tryed rolling back to older drivers back 1 year ago
-game is running on 160 gig western dig hard drive C
-Pioneer DVD drive/burner playing the game
-460 W enermax power supply-vid card has it's own power cord/everything else runs off another.

Still get the screen you'd see if you were on acid. I pray for a fix soon...the game is fun for the 8-10 min i get to play.

 

[Raider62]

-Asus A7N8X-E Delux Motherboard
-AMD Athlon 3200
-sound blaster live-all updated drivers tryed swithing to onboard nvidia with updated drivers.
-2x512mb Kingston Hyper X Ram
-BFG 6800 GT OC=all updated drivers, tryed rolling back to older drivers back 1 year ago
-game is running on 160 gig western dig hard drive C
-Pioneer DVD drive/burner playing the game
-460 W enermax power supply-vid card has it's own power cord/everything else runs off another.

Still get the screen you'd see if you were on acid. I pray for a fix soon...the game is fun for the 8-10 min i get to play.

yeah its that BFG 6800 that you have. Most of us in this thread have that exact card and it fails in the exact same way. That is what sux the game is fun if it didnt drive me crazy trying to play it....

 

[joejr]

I have a 6800 GS, and the game loads up, runs through the 2K video sequence, then what I call the 'advertisement' screen, then the FIRAXIS logo comes up and CRASH! I get 2 different types of crashes; 1) Computer restarts, 2) Desktop comes up like I never started the game. I just spent about $300 for hardware for this game. New graphics card, power supply, and more RAM. I will admit alot of this stuff is over my head. I just started learning about graphics cards about 3 weeks ago. This is really frustrating. My son and I really enjoy the CIV games. We have ongoing competetions and not being able to play this game is driving me nuts!!

 

[Raider62]

Try reverting back to the 81.98 video drivers. You are using beta drivers that might be causing stability issues.

 

[Alikon]

I have a Asus nvidia 6800 v9999 gt card and it does the same freeze the computer beyond ctr alt del saving while looking like television static but in larger rectangle shape. Funny thing is last night i was playing with winamp going and when it froze it completely distorted the game and screen however winamp continued to play with zero distortion and the songs kept on going. It doesnt matter what drivers i use for the video card and this is the only game that i have this error with. It is not just BFG 6800 cards i would have to assume but rather within the 6800 class. I to have to manually reboot at the point of crash and this is the only type of crash i experience with the game.

 

[Raider62]

I have a Asus nvidia 6800 v9999 gt card and it does the same freeze the computer beyond ctr alt del saving while looking like television static but in larger rectangle shape. Funny thing is last night i was playing with winamp going and when it froze it completely distorted the game and screen however winamp continued to play with zero distortion and the songs kept on going. It doesnt matter what drivers i use for the video card and this is the only game that i have this error with. It is not just BFG 6800 cards i would have to assume but rather within the 6800 class. I to have to manually reboot at the point of crash and this is the only type of crash i experience with the game.

As far as I have seen (in this thread) yours would be the first non BFG 6800 that has this exact problem. probably some sloppy coding is my guess. By who, that remains to be seen.

 

[Melhisedek]

Well I hope that I've fixed my problem (I just had CTD no hardlocks/reboots or freaky colors)

I was about to give up when I decided to do a reinstall, this time on C:
So I uninstalled the game, went into registry and deleted all keys with "Civ", "Meier", "Firaxis".

Then I downloaded latest DX9.0 (feb update) installed that one, reinstalled Civ4 this time to C:
Than I went and tried to update game with games own updater, no go. It just tried to connect. But I noticed that file it tried to download was named "v152PATCHREL.exe" instead of "civ4_update_v152.exe" I had downloaded before. So I downloaded PATCHREL this time around (mind you I don't think this has anything to do with crashes but still)

Choose same settings as before and voila... game works perfectly! No more stuttering and chopiness and most important no more crashes. Played some 3-4 hours last night. (standard map on easiest setting)

I also noticed that my shortcut had compatibility box checked before I unistalled the game... No idea why but I ran my game in compatibility mode. After reinstall it is gone.

So only things that changed are newer DX, reinstall to C: and that shortcut isn't run in any comp. mode.

Yes I didn't touch any of INI settings either, so they are all at default. Anyway I might have been just lucky last night and will have to play some more before I diagnose that crashing is gone but I'm living in hope

Sorry for spelling and/or grammar I haven't slept for quite a long time now

So I guess my problem was borked install I think, still don't help any of you, but that is how my problem got fixed.

I truly feel for you mates and hope this gets sorted out real soon

 

[Johngud]

I have been checking this problem out for a while as I have the BFG agp 6800 gt oc myself and I too can play checkers every time I play Civ 4. BFG told me to RMA my card back to them and that my problem was an isolated incident. I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle the guy on the other end but alas I am too civilized for that. Isolated problem my foot !! I did find out a common link though. It seems like it happens to VIA based motherboards. I have an asus AV8 Deluxe and it is VIA based. So if you also have a VIA based Motherboard please post so we can add that info to the fire for investigation purposes.

Thanks

 

[ellie]

I have the same issue on my main machine, x2 4800+ 2GB ram X800 card

2 or 3 times a session i have to reboot due to a similar freeze

patch is installed, ive tried reinstalling, checked dx etc.

Ended up moving to a lower spec machine which is slow but stable

I work in IT for a living, but this has me stumped.

 

[Raider62]

I have been checking this problem out for a while as I have the BFG agp 6800 gt oc myself and I too can play checkers every time I play Civ 4. BFG told me to RMA my card back to them and that my problem was an isolated incident. I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle the guy on the other end but alas I am too civilized for that. Isolated problem my foot !! I did find out a common link though. It seems like it happens to VIA based motherboards. I have an asus AV8 Deluxe and it is VIA based. So if you also have a VIA based Motherboard please post so we can add that info to the fire for investigation purposes.

Thanks

Sorry but I have nvida chipset on an Asus. Pretty sure there is nothing we can do to fix it on this end. We just have to ***** about it and wait.

If there was a work around the head programmer (thamer) who came into this thread 7 weeks ago, surely would have came back and told us, right? Surely he would have... But then again he never came back to tell us anything else so I have no idea what the hell is going on...

Dont feel bad Ellie, I worked in tech support for awhile and have tried so many things to get this to work I just gave up. Its why I believe its coding and not settings.

 

[joejr]

Try reverting back to the 81.98 video drivers. You are using beta drivers that might be causing stability issues.

I get an error when I try to load the 81.98 vidio drivers, something to do with 'hardware not supported by that driver'. I loaded the 83.40 driver from guro3d which date from 1/27. Also installed the 1.52 patch, and still the same. I have not done any tweaking of the card yet. I guess I will try doing that next. Is there anything I can do to verify the card is working properly? CIV IV is the only graphically intense game I have. I going to try downloading some demos and see what happens. I might just go crazy!

 

[Riker88]

I have the same problem described here.

I have a ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 256

At random Intervals during game play , the Screen freezes, The Mouse cursor turns into a box and I'm only able to move it right and left, not up/down/or diagagonally.

Shortly after my monitor goes dark , and it says No Input Signal
As if the monitor was not plugged into the computer.
Buttons are un-responsive , I'm forced to manually reboot.

I've read through the entire 10 pages of this tread, and I've tryed everything suggested here. The problem has not been fixed. Sometimes I'm able to play 30 or 40 mins before crash, But as of yet haven't made it to an hour.
Usually lasts only 10-15 mins.

I just picked up this game Feb 10th , so I haven't been at it as long as all of you have. You all are to be commended on your patience.

 

[Raider62]

I get an error when I try to load the 81.98 vidio drivers, something to do with 'hardware not supported by that driver'. I loaded the 83.40 driver from guro3d which date from 1/27. Also installed the 1.52 patch, and still the same. I have not done any tweaking of the card yet. I guess I will try doing that next. Is there anything I can do to verify the card is working properly? CIV IV is the only graphically intense game I have. I going to try downloading some demos and see what happens. I might just go crazy!

Hey went looking for ya cause that is weird and found this

"hey man, your card isnt supported by the 81.98 driver. It says it supports the 6800GS PCI Express but not the AGP version. The 82.12 is the first driver that supports your card and this is why you cant install any other version. Hope that helps if you havent found out already."

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t10894.html

Probably next driver will add support for your card. You can try the nvidia forums they are pretty helpful in these situations. Looks to me like you are stuck for now though.