Freeze/Crash/Reboot

[Raider62]

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.

If I remember right, I saw something on "No signal Input" somewhere in this forum. Trying using the search feature and I bet you can find a thread relating to that exact problem.

 

[LuvMacheen]

No word anyone?

I tried the february runtime directx.... and medium settings... nothing... gforce 6800 of course....

I had sent an email to take2 a while back... got a number of useless drivel boiler plate suggestions... I replied... NO response in over a week...

What a horrifying disappointment. I anticipated this games realease for MONTHS and feel terribly let down that I see no input from firaxis... or take2... anybody to say.. 'hey we see there is a problem and are trying to identify it...'

 

[Stanley9837]

Getting updates on this problem would be nice. I don't even play the game anymore. I won't waste my time playing a game that makes me completely shut down my computer.

 

[Raider62]

I agree it sucks they havent let us know anything. THAMER himself came into this thread and said he would "look into it" and hasn't said anything since. You suck Thamer and so does your company... Poor customer service is all I can say.

 

[punkkidca]

I know this really has nothing to do with Sid and his team, but EA released a patch on Feb 14 for Battlefield 2 that caused a lot of problems for a lot of users. Today, Feb 20...not even a week later, they adressed this problem by saying they are working on a solution that should be ready to go in a couple of weeks. Why can't the Civ team tell us what the hell is going on?....please, can you just shed some light on our problem?...even if you say "we are working on it, it might take 2 months to fix, but we are working on it"...thats all i ask!!!

 

[dsmiley7491]

I have a LeadTek A400 6800GT TDH clocked at 430mhz/1150mhz, 2g Corsair XMS DDR 400 at CAS 2.3.3.6, Asus P4P800 deluxe, P4 3.0c clocked at 3.6ghz.

When the system is overclocked in the slightest, I get "the crash" in Civ4 that everyone has described. ONLY in Civ4.

I have to bring my entire rig back to default clock, in order to play Civ4 with no crash.

I have NO other crashes within any other games (not so much as an artifact) when I'm overlocked.

In my opinion nothing is wrong with anyone's hardware, nor drivers. It seems to be the game.

 

[Johngud]

I got my game to work after much research on the net and a nice phone call to BFG. First I sent my card back to get a replacement. Second I increased the voltage on the agp port from 1.5 volts to 1.6, and set my ram settings from auto to DDR 400 in bios. When I got my card back and installed it Civ4 works like a charm. I couldnt tell you what fix helped. The replacement card? the voltage change or the ram config? I have no clue but it works. So if you have a problem with your card ( checkerboard ) crash, call bfg or your card manufacturer and if possible get a replacement. I have an ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard so i can only speak for myself for the Bios changes.

Good luck and thank you guys
I hope you folks can get your game running, and mine doesnt start crashing.

 

[punkkidca]

Hey good news man...A couple of questions. Is it safe to change the voltage on the apg, i just want to check a couple peoples opinions before i try it. What did you say to BFG that got you a relacement card? Did you have to beg for it or was it easy?

 

[Johngud]

Getting a replacement from BFG was like pulling teeth. I called them 3 times and emailed them twice. I told them about all the people having the same problem and they said that they never heard of it before and that mine was an isolated incident. I told them I really didnt appreciate spending 350 dollars for a high tech doorstop so someone finally gave me an RMA#. I read on an the asus message board about the voltage in that the 6800 cards need lots of juice so upping the voltage will make it more stable. I forgot where i read about the ram fix, but they did say it was a way to specifically fix a guys checkerboard crash problem.

 

[Mista]

This might or might not help. I also have 6800GT, but EVGA. I did not get the wierd graphics, but game simply froze , blue screen and shutdown.
Although it seemed ramdom, i don't think that it was. At some point in the game, ( Epic, Large world) it would freeze, and each shutdown would be at the same point.
I went back to nVidia driver 71.89, and have not had another prolbem.
System, Via MB, Athlon T-Bird 950 mHz
Below specs, but with older drivers it runs fine.

 

[[Comrade]RaVE]

I too am a 6800GT/OC from BFGTek user. Same situation with me; I get about 40 min of game time in before my computer decides to do a complete pixellate and freeze motion.

I've underclocked my GT to stock speeds (350/1000) and no such luck. Temperature is running nominally, it seems. Infact my diagnostics show my card can be pushed further than the factory-set overclock.

This is severely frustrating. I don't want to nerf my card completely just to play this freaking game. I'm a civfanatic, through and through, but this is just insane.

 

[Raider62]

If nerfing the card would fix the problem I would do it to play. But unfortunately it seems to do nothing to help our problem. I have done pretty much everything I can think of and everything that has been suggested on these boards. I am convinved there is nothing we can do and its up to the developers to fix it. I have owned Civ since it first came out and this has just ruined my opinion of the game...

 

[[Comrade]RaVE]

I tried to see if CIV was being sensitive to my overclocks (on both PC and video card) and no avail. Everything was at stock speed and no positive change.

Graphics temperature seems to stay around 64-65 in game.

 

[jensen5007]

HELLO ALL CIV FANS!!!

I am a HUGE fan of the civ games. I just got Civ 4 about 3 weeks ago and am having big problems with it. One day i can play for how ever long i wish and its fine. The next i can play for a few min. and the game resets me pc. I have called the tech support several times and still they cant help. can anyone out there help me??????????? PLZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks

 

[Mista]

Since going back to older drivers I ihave had no problem with the graphics card. However, I was still getting shutdowns. Difference was it was not reported as a driver error but as a stop code... Checked my temperature, and it turned out that my CPU fan was running errtically causing the CPU to overheat. For me (Atholn 950) that is about 65 C. I juryrigged a cooling fan until i could relace it, CPU ran at about 55 when at ide, but increased to 65 and cutoff when the gam was running. Withi the fan replaced, idle is not 40 degrees C. It still rises about 10 degrees during the game BTW, 65C = 149F. A card could be too hot to touch, but still in its safty parameters.

 

[Brashagent]

Hmmmm....wow i am very unhappy to see that this issue still hasnt been addresed properly.I havnt played this game for months becuase of this i have had it since when it was released!

 

[lhotka]

Bought the game a couple of days ago and wasn't even able to watch the tutorial - shut down the whole machine (power off) after only a couple of minutes. In using XP Pro since release I've only had one other time when the whole machine dropped like that - and that was after a motherboard failure. Quite something to actually power off the entire machine with a software bug.

I changed to the latest Omega Drivers, which postponed the crash a bit. Looked in the system logs and found errors with VMWare's virtual network driver. I uninstalled VMWare Workstation, and was able to play for several hours without a problem. It looks like the DRM stuff doesn't like any virtual drivers on the machine of any kind (had to uninstall DLA just to run the game).

OK Guys - I'm a strong IP guy (working on patents and such myself). But you know that the cracks are going to be out within moments of release. Why screw up the world for the rest of us with DRM that doesn't really prevent much anyway? Set a reasonable price, and be done with it. People who pirate the program wouldn't buy it anyway, but lot's of folks won't buy it now because it crashes!

IBM Thinkpad R50P, 2 GB RAM, 128 MB ATI Mobility FireGL T2
XP Pro, all patches.

 

[[Comrade]RaVE]

I've managed to get my game to run a little bit longer by underclocking my card (which is a damned shame) and setting some variable from 0 to 1 in the INI. Not exactly sure what it was off the top of my head.

I actually managed to play through a bit of a round before freezing!

I'm probably going to try it again with graphics lowered and *sigh* see what that will bring.

For someone who's running a 2.82ghz chipset with a 6800GT and 1.5gb of PC3200 I'm not too thrilled about setting my stuff to 'low.'

 

[jensen5007]

EVERY ONE who is having this game crash their computer what is your PSU? I was Crashing all the time in diff. spots and at diff. lengths of time playing but then I seen that a low PSU will cause a crash!! so i went and got a power supply of 350w and NO MORE CRASHIN!!!!!!!!!

 

[Raider62]

EVERY ONE who is having this game crash their computer what is your PSU? I was Crashing all the time in diff. spots and at diff. lengths of time playing but then I seen that a low PSU will cause a crash!! so i went and got a power supply of 350w and NO MORE CRASHIN!!!!!!!!!

sorry got 450 watts here its not the psu