Frustrating problem

[Pieman]

Civ keeps on crashing, particularly when I get to the modern era. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling, getting a new patch, putting the graphics down to the lowest level and defragmenting my computer, all to no avail. Anything I can do to stop it constantly crashing?

 

[Steve2000]

What are your system specs? Please post a dxdiag result as an attachment here (Go to Start Menu, click Run..., type in dxdiag, and then save all information).

In the later stages of the game it slows down for everyone, how much so depends mostly on your RAM and graphics card. It is possible that a graphics driver update will improve things for you.

Once we have isolated that your hardware and drivers are okay - there are a few tweaks you can do by adjusting some of the settings in the config file (Civilization4.ini). There are a bunch of settings that can only be adjusted here, and not in-game. Poke around, and if you have questions about what the settings do, and which are the best to adjust ask back here.

Beyond that, the only other thing you can do is change your autosave interval to 1 (so that you don't lose a bunch of turns when it crashes)!

 

[Pieman]

DxDiag attached.

 

[Steve2000]

Okay, you have an ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card. I will admit right off the bat, that I have a major bias regarding this card because I used to have one in my PC. I had nothing but troubles with it as well. Similar crashing problems, that seemed to be pretty random.

The problem with this card is that it is not really a "gaming" card. It is more of a mainstream card. It does have cool features, like displaying HD content on your PC to your TV. It does have 256MB of video RAM, but because the memory interface is only 64bit, you can't really take advantage of that. It also has a pretty low memory and core clock speed.

You can definitely update your video drivers. ATI has a driver dated 10/15/08. Your current driver is 3/29/08, so that mighthelp.

Next issue - is system RAM. You have 1GB, which is generally okay for Civ, but how old is your PC? Your BIOS is dated 2004, so is your PC 4 years old? If so, you may have so many processes and programs running in the background that even if Civ 4 is the "only" program running, your system may be simply running out of RAM after you have been playing for a while.
You could try killing some of the extraneous programs and processes to see if that helps. Additionally, you might try enabling the line in the config file that says:

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

(Change the "0" to a "1")

You should also try messing with some specific in-game settings besides "low" graphics settings like single unit graphics. You could also try playing the game in a lower resolution (like 800x600). This will put less pressure on your graphics card. Finally, you can try playing mostly smaller map sizes. The smaller the map size the less graphics and memory intense the game will be.

Good luck! and post back with updates/further questions.

 

[Pieman]

I think it's memory rather than the graphics card that's the issue as whenever the computer crashes it'll usually say "Failed to allocate video memory" or something like (though it is also followed by message that says "Runtime Error" - what's that about?). Whats more, while Civ does crash, more recent games I have on my PC, like Call of Duty 4 and Medieval II run fairly smoothly, so I think the graphics card is fine. Still though, I don't know that much about computers so I might be wrong about that.

The remedies you proposed seem to have helped a fair bit. I have uninstalled 2 programs and I might try and remove some more. I can't seem to do anything about the resolution cos the lowest appears to be 1024 x whatever rather than 800 x 600... I also did that "Allows some memory savings" thing. The crashes haven't stopped outright but they've seemed to have eased a fair bit (and my only crashes have been on the Fall from Heaven mod, which seems detail heavy). Thanks for your advice mate, you've made playing this game a good deal less frustrating.

 

[Pieman]

Erm, disregard part of that last message. For some reason or another, after I unistalled another program, the crash rate shot up dramatically. Know why?

 

[Steve2000]

If you are getting the "failed to allocate video memory" error when it crashes then the reason is because basically the game is requiring too much video memory from your graphics card, and so it is trying to get some RAM from your PC. When it can't get enough, it crashes. There is no reason I can think of why uninstalling an unrelated program should affect this.

If the memsaver config option is not helping then you should:

1) Make sure you have the latest version of DirectX 9.0c. Go to microsoft's website and download the DirectX 9.0c webinstaller (it should be the Nov 2008 version - go to Microsoft's download center

2) Again, make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. (go to ATI's site and select your card (Radeon HD 2400) You could also try the Omega drivers, if you want. (Omega)