From FIRAXIS: Possible Fixes for "Failed to Initialize Renderer" Startup Error

[ickabod27]

I'm just frustrated, I was itching to play this and now more than likely my plans for global domination this weekend are ruined.

Anyway here are my specs that don't work
Dell XPS (Which if you read the catalyst specs, won't run on a Dell)
Pent 4 Extreme 3.4 gig
2 gig Ram
Radeon 9800 moble ATI

I've tried to update my video drivers, no luck
I tired to install the catalyst 5.1 but it won't work on my computer, says I have to talk to the manufacturer
Tried Omega drivers
Tried every form of directx 9 I could find, including the developer edition found on the MS website. And yes I tried multiple times with the Directx version that comes with the game.

Basically I've tried everything that has been posted with no luck. Please get a patch out ASAP. I'm past anger, I just want to play the game after reading how great it is.

 

[handyandy]

I think people should stop blaming firaxis , the first post said that they did not find any of these problems when they tested the game. Time and money only allows a limited number of tests and differnt systems. if they tested on these ATI cards and didnt find any problems it wouldnt make any sense to do further tests when they belived the where no problems. they should be praised however that now they know of a problem they are trying to fix it.

 

[rtilley]

Any timeline on a patch to fix this? Someone? Anyone? Please? Pretty please?

Have it working on an ATI Mobility Radeon x300, but it refuses to work on anything with a ATI Radeon 9559 chip.

 

[gavelwood]

I am also frustrated. I have a VERY similiar config to ickabod27. I have a XPS laptop with 1 Gig of Ram, 9800 mobile ATI, Pent 4 3.6, etc. I have updated by card from Dell with the latest drivers and ran the Directx ver. that came with the game. FYI.... I have bought Age of Empires III, Warhammer Winter Assault, along with a couple of just recently released games and they all work with NO problems. Cannot believe it is the update. I will try loading the game to my desktop XPS this PM since it does not have updated drivers.

 

[rchddap]

Its not just hardware that they have to think about, but also other software that might be on the users machines. As said, they can't test everything. I have to admit though, that it appears as if they need to review their testing procedures looking at the amount of people having problems.

They will also need time to find the source of the problem, and then some further time to develop a fix for it (unfortunately). The only way that a fix could be released so soon after the launch (and finding out about the problem) is if they actually knew about the problem before hand and were already working on a fix prior to the launch date.

Yes I'm in the UK, no I don't have the game, and yes I would still be very unhappy if the tables were turned (so to speak)

 

[Librum]

I think people should stop blaming firaxis , the first post said that they did not find any of these problems when they tested the game. Time and money only allows a limited number of tests and differnt systems. if they tested on these ATI cards and didnt find any problems it wouldnt make any sense to do further tests when they belived the where no problems. they should be praised however that now they know of a problem they are trying to fix it.

I'm sorry, who else should I be blaming when a game doesn't work out of the box for a not insignificant segment of the gaming market? I've got 20+ other games installed on my machine that run, and have run, without a hitch, and certainly none of them failed to load after install.

Of course they're going to say they didn't have this problem on the machines they tested it on - because they probably didn't. That just shows that the machines they were testing it on were not adequate to the task at hand.

This is a fantastic screw-up, and there's really no reason for people to be posting in a _bug thread_ about those having problems to just clam up. Go take your beaming praise to another thread, thanks.

 

[Iolum]

O please, save me this firaxis kissing. Civ 4 may be fun, but how the heck would I know. I have 4 comps here, and it wont run on ANY. I refuse to believe they tested it and found no problems. Its more like they found the problem, and released it anyway, making us pay 50 bucks to beta test their screw up.

Its easy to say those having problems are a minority when you can play it yourself. I didnt pay for it yesterday so I can play it a week or two later.

 

[drolltroll]

Now I seem to be really and truely screwed. I followed Trip's suggestion.

Went to control panel and removed ATI Drivers, went to ATI support, and downloaded new drivers, when I tried to install them I get a message telling me a serious error has occurred, and I need to install standard VGA drivers.

Where the heck do I get them?

 

[Aedwild]

I think people should stop blaming firaxis , the first post said that they did not find any of these problems when they tested the game. Time and money only allows a limited number of tests and differnt systems. if they tested on these ATI cards and didnt find any problems it wouldnt make any sense to do further tests when they belived the where no problems. they should be praised however that now they know of a problem they are trying to fix it.

What really goes on in handyandy's head when he posts here ----> Me, handyandy, like firaxis. It am good, hard-working, and honest company. Me no like all those hundreds of wrong people whom blame good firaxis. The customer am always wrong especially when them are hard-core gamers with the latest computers and whom know how to install games and upgrade computers. Stupid customers should be nice to good firaxis because firaxis am honest.

 

[ickabod27]

Yeah where do we get the VGA drivers? I had that one come up too.

 

[handyandy]

there are millions of possible system combinations they tested what they could and found no problems, obviously they should have found the problem as it seems to be affecting so many people but , ultimatly it's not there fault that there test systems played the games fine. it's nobodys fault persay but if it turns out they only tested it on a handfull of combinations then they or whoever restricted the combinations should be blamed.
it is just very unlucky that it doesnt work for people, and by what i have seen the firaxis people are working on sorting it out.

 

[Iolum]

Yeah where do we get the VGA drivers? I had that one come up too.

First uninstall your current drivers, restart the comp, install the new drivers you downloaded. It should do it.

It is quite obvious this game has barely seen any testing, given how much they rushed it. I got the french poster AND the rendere message.

 

[handyandy]

What really goes on in handyandy's head when he posts here ----> Me, handyandy, like firaxis. It am good, hard-working, and honest company. Me no like all those hundreds of wrong people whom blame good firaxis. The customer am always wrong especially when them are hard-core gamers with the latest computers and whom know how to install games and upgrade computers. Stupid customers should be nice to good firaxis because firaxis am honest.

sorry for the two posts but.

All i am saying is that i find it extreamly hard to believe they would deliberatly release a game they knew the where problems with unless they where forced to by the publishers. in which case it is still not firaxis fault. i agree the have been failings in the testing but in my opinion they did all they could , beta testers and internal testers playing on varying riggs. it is deffinatly not the customours fault and firaxis should do what they can to solve the problem , but i say again if they didnt find the problem in what they felt or was forced to be sufficant testing then it's just unfortunate.

 

[travh20]

Now I seem to be really and truely screwed. I followed Trip's suggestion.

Went to control panel and removed ATI Drivers, went to ATI support, and downloaded new drivers, when I tried to install them I get a message telling me a serious error has occurred, and I need to install standard VGA drivers.

Where the heck do I get them?

this is something I said earlier. In an attempt to appease the pissed off consumers they threw out a bunch of faux fixes, not thinking that just randomly recomending things like erasing drivers and changing settings most people never touch might screw up someones system. this whole thing is a complete cluster f*** and quite possibly the biggest let down in gaming history.

 

[lebowski]

Wonder who has their resume circulating at Firaxis......

If it was ONE card having issues, I can totally understand. If it was FIVE types of vidcards with problems I can understand. However this is a HUGE number of cards. Look at the people posting their setups. There are too many similiarities to just simply say "oh testing didn't find this."

Possible in-studio Firaxis findings:
a) they tested the "problem" cards and it worked fine. Probability 10%
b) They tested ONE "problem" card and it worked fine. Probability 6%
c) They knew about the errors, but they were going to be late getting the product for the launch date with a fix, so they let out an inferior product knowing that they can make up the mistake later with a patch. The heads of Firaxis got some number crunchers in and validated that it would be cheaper to throw out a patch then to recall the product. Probability 80%

And don't give me this crap "oh they posted on this board they are here to help". WHERE IS THEIR SUPPORT FORUM ON THE CIV PAGE!!! It is becoming extremely transparent that they weren't ready for this to launch. No support on site, mislabeled cds, FRENCH INSERTS, and to top it off - BUGS.

It's crap, and anyone who doesn't feel this way is fooling themselves. Kudos to those who got it to work and are hopefully enjoying the game. To the rest of us who are unlucky - How long will we let them get away with shoddy products?

 

[handyandy]

It is becoming extremely transparent that they weren't ready for this to launch. No support on site, mislabeled cds, FRENCH INSERTS,

the french inserts and misslabed cd's are not firaxis fault, but the publishers. i do admit though that it hasnt been a very well organised launch and it does seem very hurried

 

[Sir Joe]

I tried to the Uninstalled DirectX didn't work could Uninstall it with any of the (2) programs I used and I try to upgrade my Video Driver expect it's two years old and there seems to be no Drives available for it. The card is a Asylum Geforce FX 5600 256 MB, AGP

 

[Rotluchs]

Hi all,

I worked on getting this installed for 5 hours -- not unlike many of the rest of you. FORTUNATELY, I was able to get it working **finally**. I wanted to just play it, but I HAD to come back and let yous guys know what I did to get it working.

refresher:

WinXPpro
DUAL AMD1800's ~ 1.5GHz each
512 MB RAM
Radeon ATLantis 9200SE

tried:
updating and reinstalling everything -- ATI drivers (both Omega & OEM 5.1) and DirectX9.0c (both from Civ CD and from Winblowsupdate.com) -- also completely wiped/reinstalled Civ IV (just to try it). I had also done a lot of praying, cussing, and toking during this time.

Then I read the post about DirectX9.0 removal tool on MajorGeeks.com.

I remembered that the brandest-newest version of DirectX took a dump on me when installed bundled w/ other games, so I tried it. YOU NEED YOUR WINXP CD HANDY!

Go to www.majorgeeks.com and find the directx removal tool and then extract it to THIS FOLDER C:\DXTEMP

that folder. THAT one. Then reboot in Safe Mode. According to the readme, you MUST do this in Safe Mode.

Once in Safe Mode run the file called DX9UN.BAT in the DXTEMP dir. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS WHEN PROMPTED.

I went through it and rebooted to normal desktop. I went to Control Panel and the DirectX util now said I was running DirectX 8.1 I then went and tried it.........

.....the opening movie was a sight for (really red) sore eyes!! I can't garauntee this is going to work, but it is definately worth the effort once you get it working!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I'm off to conquer the world! Good luck!

JUST TO BE CLEAR TO THE COMMUNITY: So, youre actually running this game on DX 8.1 instead of DX 9.anything ??????

 

[ickabod27]

Tried that with the drivers. But when I rebooted it still said the same thing, cause that's what I was thinking too.

Oh well I give up, I'll wait for the patch (please be soon) I'm not happy but what can I do. Oh wait go play WoW

Here was something interesting that I found, not sure it means a hill of beans but... I did a test on my open GL and direct draw tests through the ATI stuff on the computer where you see the spinning black box and that worked fine. Then after trying to load the game and getting the crash, the same graphics test wouldn't work until after I restarted my computer. Does that mean anything?

 

[jdchambe]

I got a GOOD TIP guys.

As far as i understand NO ATI cards works regardless if you have their latest driver or latest DirectX.

Your understanding is incorrect. I have two machines. Both have ATI cards. The game works on one and does not work on the other. I've already posted the details elsewhere.

Multiple people have also posted on various threads saying that they have the Radeon x800 PRO and are having no problems.