Freeze/Crash/Reboot

[Luv_Muffin]

I exceed specs too, but have had troubles with this game. I know where you are coming from.

Man, I really feel sorry for you. I wish I could give you a link that would fix your problems, I really do. Sorry I can't help anymore. Hopefully someone else with more knowledge can help you.

 

[Neon Deon]

Civ ran not so good today, averaging a crash around every 15 - 30 mins.

Try underclocking your card by 20 percent.

What type of crash did you get?

CTD. freeze, or reboot.

 

[Raider62]

ok will try turning it down next time I play probably tonight.

It's the exact same every time. It freezes and the screen looks TV snow except its not moving and the mouse cursor turns into a block that is the same color/pattern as the the screen. There is also color in it.

Computer then must be manually restarted.

Thanks for the help Muffin. Hopefully this will all get figured out.

Neon side note that the Card is factory overclocked, not by me. Supposed to be stable...

 

[EricTred]

I have the same vid card 6800 gt x8 agp nvidia card by PNY tech running off a 600 watt PS by tech toys, P4 3.0 gig,,,, 2 gig ram,, SB aud. MSI mb

I have the EXACT same problem you stated, the graphic artifacts all over, the slow down, then freeze, then lock up , I cant even con-alt-del , must manual shut down.

I dont know about you but my days of buying computor games are comming to an end. It seems lately that every game I buy is just not ready for stores, and I'm talking every game I have bought in the last 6 months...to name a few...

WoW online,,, Dungon lords,,, Axis & Allies, AoE 3 (ctd alot but was playable),, Quake 4 (ctd alot but playable but still very annoying) and now this game Civ 4 ( Btw this was my 1st civ game ,,, and my last!!)

I'm gonna buy a consol game system and be done with it, I'm not a computor techy so I don't WANT TO FIND THE FIX TO THE PROBLEM thats why I pay 40-60 $ for your games. If I wanted to learn Comp science I'd go to college.

I want to spend the time I DO have PLAYING the game not being your ghost beta tester, its time we sent these companys a message and just boycott all their games till they realize were not joking around, but thats just wishful thinking.

Sorry didnt mean to rant on your post but I'm kinda fed up.

I spend more time on forums trying to find a solution for these borked games than playing and sifting thou all these posts to get actual info is mind numbing,, (opens up window and lets out a blood curling scream..closes window) ,,, I feel much better now,,, later guys and GL fixing your problem , I'll be lurking as usual hoping for the best.

 

[EricTred]

Neon AA is set to app controlled not sure about fastwrites and write combining and vsync. couldnt find those in my properties

On your windows start up screen ,,, right click, choose properties.... settings....advanced...GF 6800 gt tab.....then performance & Quality settings.... and you will see options for AA,AF, v sync,,, hope that helps some what.

 

[EricTred]

Try underclocking your card by 20 percent.

What type of crash did you get?

CTD. freeze, or reboot.

When you mean under clocking are we talking about turning down the voltage in the bios for the vid card? thanks.

ow btw I get all of those problems to,,ctd,,freeze,,reboot and all kinds of raining graphical colored noise, dosent really start until I play about 20-30 turns or it happens quicker if I run into a AI unit or a I get a phone call from them, also assorted graphical spikes come out of my units too.

I have probably tried all the drivers nvidia has on the archive site, I have uninstalled , defragged reinstalled, new drivers , old drivers, still no results.


later

 

[EoE]

Phew, finally it works.

What I did was basically this:

1) turn off every advanced setting in the Nvidia controller (AA, filtering etc.)
2) download the December DirectX version.
3) turn all graphics to medium in the Civ 4 option menu.

Of these 3 I don't know which one did the trick or why it works. Fact is, it does. Now I could probably do some testing to narrow it down, but you know what? I gotta go backstab my friend Louis aka the Heathen French Pig. Poor fella shares my continent and has all the horsies.

rgds/EoE

Sigh ... I'm back in crash city. I played on a medium map until 1450 without any problems. Now, when I load the game, I can play 5 turns or so, then it's back to the same old crash: the screen fills with graphic mumbo-jumbo and my computer locks.

rgds/EoE

 

[Neon Deon]

When you mean under clocking are we talking about turning down the voltage in the bios for the vid card? thanks.

ow btw I get all of those problems to,,ctd,,freeze,,reboot and all kinds of raining graphical colored noise, dosent really start until I play about 20-30 turns or it happens quicker if I run into a AI unit or a I get a phone call from them, also assorted graphical spikes come out of my units too.

I have probably tried all the drivers nvidia has on the archive site, I have uninstalled , defragged reinstalled, new drivers , old drivers, still no results.


later

No not the voltage erik.

Use software underclock to change clock speed not the voltage. Underclock both the gpu and the ram. leave the voltage alone.

I think the voltage thru bios would be too low and the card heats up lowers it even further and bam boom freeze or maybe ctd. most of this stuff does not happen till after you play awhile.

Underclock first, if you go a noticeabel difference longer, then up the voltage if you know how by .1: That is point 1 not 1.

 

[EoE]

I don't want to do too many trial'n'errors, since one of those many hardboots is going to destroy something one of these days, but:

Just for the heck of it, I started a new game on a tiny map with just 1 AI civilization. 14 turns into the new game it crashed on me.

I really can't figure out what the problem is. A couple of days ago it ran just fine without a single glitch, before I quit for the day in 1450. I also made sure to press 'shift' when I start the game to clear the XML cache, and I haven't changed anything on my system, so there's really no reason why the game yet again has become unstable. Either I was just very lucky the other day or something is saved somewhere, that just messes up the system?

rgds/EoE

 

[Neon Deon]

I don't want to do too many trial'n'errors, since one of those many hardboots is going to destroy something one of these days, but:

Just for the heck of it, I started a new game on a tiny map with just 1 AI civilization. 14 turns into the new game it crashed on me.

I really can't figure out what the problem is. A couple of days ago it ran just fine without a single glitch, before I quit for the day in 1450. I also made sure to press 'shift' when I start the game to clear the XML cache, and I haven't changed anything on my system, so there's really no reason why the game yet again has become unstable. Either I was just very lucky the other day or something is saved somewhere, that just messes up the system?

rgds/EoE

Could you pont me to the thread where you have your dxdiag file and system specs listed?

Thanks.

 

[EoE]

Could you pont me to the thread where you have your dxdiag file and system specs listed?

Thanks.

I can do better and attach it here.

rgds/EoE

 

[Neon Deon]

I can do better and attach it here.

rgds/EoE

Thanks

MedionPC.

What is the make and model number?

Have you added anything to the original? If so, name, make and model of what you added? Or if the system was configurable at time of purchase how did you configure it?

BTW.

Page file useage is high which indicates other programs running in the background at time of dxdiag report. Do you have anti virus? If so which one?

 

[EoE]

Thanks

MedionPC.

What is the make and model number?

Sorry, I don't have that. I can tell you though, that it's a MD5000 motherboard, that I have updated with the newest driver.

Have you added anything to the original? If so, name, make and model of what you added?

I added 512 MB DDR RAM, a Inno3D 6800 GT card and exchanged the PSU with a 580 Watt Silentdrive model. After installing the RAM I ran several Memtests and had no problems.

Page file useage is high which indicates other programs running in the background at time of dxdiag report. Do you have anti virus? If so which one?

I close most background programs before I start Civ IV. And I tried running with anti virus off. It's an upgraded McAfee suite with antivirus, spamkiller and firewall.

I sent my Dxdiag, MSInfo, logfiles etc. to Firaxis twice. Along with a mail where I pointed out that Il-2/FB/Pacific Fighters with the 4.01m patch showed a similar problem for some users, but that the 4.02m patch fixed it. It might be the same issue here or it might not.

rgds/EoE

 

[Beleg Strongbow]

I too am having this problem. I have an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM, and the BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC (factory overclocked), and I get the same corrupted graphics then lost monitor signal, which causes me to reboot.

I have a few other relatively intensive games (FarCry for one) and they all run fine. My card's temperature never gets above 80C, so overheating isn't the problem, and I really don't want to have to tone down my settings to play, since I am well over the minimum requirements.

One other note. I had this problem when I bought the game unpatched, but it went away when I used the unpak tool on the art file. It came back after 1.09 and is still with me with the new patch too. I hope someone can figure this out.

 

[EoE]

I too am having this problem. I have an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM, and the BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC (factory overclocked), and I get the same corrupted graphics then lost monitor signal, which causes me to reboot.

I have a few other relatively intensive games (FarCry for one) and they all run fine. My card's temperature never gets above 80C, so overheating isn't the problem, and I really don't want to have to tone down my settings to play, since I am well over the minimum requirements.

One other note. I had this problem when I bought the game unpatched, but it went away when I used the unpak tool on the art file. It came back after 1.09 and is still with me with the new patch too. I hope someone can figure this out.

Have you tried this?:

1) turn off every advanced setting in the Nvidia controller (AA, filtering etc.)
2) download the December DirectX version.
3) turn all graphics to medium in the Civ 4 option menu.

rgds/EoE

 

[Neon Deon]

Sorry, I don't have that. I can tell you though, that it's a MD5000 motherboard, that I have updated with the newest driver.




I added 512 MB DDR RAM, a Inno3D 6800 GT card and exchanged the PSU with a 580 Watt Silentdrive model. After installing the RAM I ran several Memtests and had no problems.




I close most background programs before I start Civ IV. And I tried running with anti virus off. It's an upgraded McAfee suite with antivirus, spamkiller and firewall.

I sent my Dxdiag, MSInfo, logfiles etc. to Firaxis twice. Along with a mail where I pointed out that Il-2/FB/Pacific Fighters with the 4.01m patch showed a similar problem for some users, but that the 4.02m patch fixed it. It might be the same issue here or it might not.

rgds/EoE

I see nothing that sticks out in the diag. I have norton and not mcavee so i cant say how it works. But If you are turning off mcavee you might have to shutdown the services in ms config. You have to to that for norton inorder to truly stop it. Anyways a freeze instead of ctd probably would not be the cause of av on.

You could verify your video card is on its own power line with no other devices daisey chained to it. Check to make sure it is plugged in good enough and that the card is seated properly to the motherboard.

While your in there you could also verify that you have no burnt out oosing caps around the cpu.

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=438&page=1&pp=15

 

[EoE]

You could verify your video card is on its own power line with no other devices daisey chained to it.

That's a new one. I honestly don't know, and I didn't know it could cause a problem. I'm gonna crank the case open tonight and take a look-see. Thanks.

rgds/EoE

 

[noomeclipz]

I'm getting random crash's and haven to reboot by holding in power button..game us to crahs after 3 min to 10 to 15min. Realy random....

I downloaded Rivatuner and turned off fastwrites and it seems to alow me to play for about 40 mins...which is realy great but some times 40min seems like 10 min haah...great game just wish it was stable.

Here is my Dxdiag...hope this helps.

 

[EoE]

You could verify your video card is on its own power line with no other devices daisey chained to it. Check to make sure it is plugged in good enough and that the card is seated properly to the motherboard.

I gave my case a good kick until it cracked open . Seems that when I installed my 6800 card and my PSU I did put it on a separate power line, so that's not it either.

Anyway, thanks for trying.

rgds/EoE

 

[Coldt]

One of the following 4 issues solved my problem, CIV has been running flawlessly for 3 days :

(a) CIV 1.52 patch;
(b) Absolutely newest Nvidia drivers (released a few days ago);
(c) Fresh install of Win XP ;
(b) Defragged and cleared space on the hard drive where CIV was installed.

Hope this helps those of you with similar problems.