Game suddenly crashes

[Emerentius]

reboot all the time
got a radeon x800 xt platinum, using latest drivers, tried the "radeon" solution.
trying to find a pattern.

 

[marius4143]

I've been having this same set of problems, but I think I found a workaround today. Try changing the AGP Speed setting to Off. I made that change this morning and played all day today without a single crash!

Here's how to do it on an ATI graphics card if you installed the ATI control panel - your mileage may vary...

1. Right click on the desktop and select Properties.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Click the SMARTGART tab.
5. Move the "Set AGP Speed" slider to the "off" position.
6. Click OK until you get back to the desktop.
7. Reboot.

You'll want to turn it back on for other games, but it doesn't seem to affect the performance at all on Civ IV. I'm fairly certain this worked for me since I was never able to play more than an hour without locking up or getting graphics corruption. I had the game running for over 12 hours today after changing this setting.

Good luck. Hope this helps someone.

 

[onedreamer]

I'll join the club too. Since I saw many ATI cards listed, I'm going to say that I have a GeForce 6600 so I doubt it's a video card problem.
I seemed to notice that the game would crash occasionally during autosaves, which are set every 4 turns by default. So I disabled autosaves from the .ini file. The game crashes much less but still does sometimes.
However, even if I crashed like a hundred of times now, only once my PC completely rebooted.

 

[onedreamer]

I've been having this same set of problems, but I think I found a workaround today. Try changing the AGP Speed setting to Off. I made that change this morning and played all day today without a single crash!

Here's how to do it on an ATI graphics card if you installed the ATI control panel - your mileage may vary...

1. Right click on the desktop and select Properties.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Click the SMARTGART tab.
5. Move the "Set AGP Speed" slider to the "off" position.
6. Click OK until you get back to the desktop.
7. Reboot.

You'll want to turn it back on for other games, but it doesn't seem to affect the performance at all on Civ IV. I'm fairly certain this worked for me since I was never able to play more than an hour without locking up or getting graphics corruption. I had the game running for over 12 hours today after changing this setting.

Good luck. Hope this helps someone.

wait... here it seems that you solved a graphical problem. Locking up or getting graphics corruption is completely different from crashing to desktop or rebooting the whole system. Are you sure you are in topic ?

 

[NinjaCool]

I have the same problem but with a blue screen. I've only experienced it 2 times though but its irritating that I have to reboot system.

P4 3GHz HT
1GB ram
ATI 9700 PRO 128MB
Audigy 2 sound

 

[aquavit]

I've been having the same issue. The game frequently causes my monitor to go into standby for a few seconds and then the computer reboots. Sometimes XP will report a serious error when I log back in. The system event log always shows a stop code of 0x1000007F.

I'm having the exact same problem, thought I'd share my data point...

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
ASUS K8VSE-DX
1 gig DDR PC3200 RAM

and the killer...

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO

Now the game ran fine for the first few days, all on high graphics. I even was running version 4.9 of the graphics driver. Now I'm to the point in my game where there is a lot going on. It's completely rebooting my computer just as described by the poster I've quoted. This happens about every second turn with not real trend. Sometimes I'll be moving the screen or moving a unit or even upgrading a unit. I tried running the graphics on low, windowed mode and upgrading the graphics drivers to 5.1 but it's has made no discernable difference.

Just to reiterate, no problem with the graphics just a complete system reboot after about 2 turns or 2-5 minutes of playing.

 

[marius4143]

wait... here it seems that you solved a graphical problem. Locking up or getting graphics corruption is completely different from crashing to desktop or rebooting the whole system. Are you sure you are in topic ?

Yes, I am on topic. The locking up, graphics corruption, crashing to desktop, rebooting are all related problems. I no longer experience ANY of these problems after turning off the AGP setting mentioned. It's worth a try don't you think?

 

[Sgt.Keel]

Yes, I am on topic. The locking up, graphics corruption, crashing to desktop, rebooting are all related problems. I no longer experience ANY of these problems after turning off the AGP setting mentioned. It's worth a try don't you think?

Thank you for the info. Sadly, I cannot confirm this. I just tried turning the AGP 8x off, together with all three other checkboxes in the Catalyst 5.10 section (fast writes, and the other stuff that requires AGP), rebooted, deleted my game cache and loaded up my game. Lasted all of 4 turns until a sudden hard reboot. I also experienced a vast drop in performance compared to running the game with 8x AGP enabled.

So either
-we have two different problems here
-you just were lucky and there's no direct causal relation between this setting and game stability
-there is some kind of relation between game instability and low level driver settings but it's not direct and overlayed by this weird randomness, non-predictability and non-reproducability (wow, cool words).

I fear it's the latter one, which would mean you're probably going to have another lockup sooner or later, though I really wish you the best .


On a side note: I upgraded the Analog Devices sound chip on my Asus K8V SE Deluxe to the latest beta drivers availbale from Asus and now I seem to at least get constant background soundtrack. Haven't been able to check whether the stuttering on wonder movie playback is gone (game always crashes way before any wonder comes close to beeing completed :-/ ).

Yours
Markus

 

[marius4143]

Thank you for the info. Sadly, I cannot confirm this. I just tried turning the AGP 8x off, together with all three other checkboxes in the Catalyst 5.10 section (fast writes, and the other stuff that requires AGP), rebooted, deleted my game cache and loaded up my game. Lasted all of 4 turns until a sudden hard reboot. I also experienced a vast drop in performance compared to running the game with 8x AGP enabled.

Sorry to hear that. I guess it was too good to be true.

 

[Old Dood]

Thank you for the info. Sadly, I cannot confirm this. I just tried turning the AGP 8x off, together with all three other checkboxes in the Catalyst 5.10 section (fast writes, and the other stuff that requires AGP), rebooted, deleted my game cache and loaded up my game. Lasted all of 4 turns until a sudden hard reboot. I also experienced a vast drop in performance compared to running the game with 8x AGP enabled.

Markus

Hmmm...Well I use the Catalyst drivers on my ATI. I do not know if different types of ATI cards make a difference or not. Maybe. My details are in this thread here: http://http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3248901#post3248901

 

[Emerentius]

can find some pattern.
after rebooting and starting over my latest sequence was; reboot after 8/17/20 turns.
so perhaps a 100 reboots from now i can continue to play till the end of the game

 

[Sgt.Keel]

can find some pattern.
[...] reboot after 8/17/20 turns.
so perhaps a 100 reboots from now i can continue to play till the end of the game

Now there's a prospect ! Have you actually ever come from the "crash on turn 1" point? Because I still seem to experience shortening crash intervals, so maybe it's a kind of parabolic curve and you're beyond the minimum already. Hm, maybe the games came with it's own biorythm .

I wonder: once you reach the point where the crash intervals are slower than the fragmenting and corrupting of your system files caused by them, is Civ 4 technically a functioning product then ?

Ok, Firaxis better hurry up with the patch, I seem to have crossed the line from frustration to sarcasm and am rapidly aproaching the "going insane" state...

Yours
Markus

 

[HermeticHeretic]

Hi all! Sort of a new member(forgot my old password but returned for some Civ 4 discussion ).

Just wanted to comment on a problem I'm having. I have a Radeon 9200 256MB video card, I had and fixed the "failed to initialize renderer" issue and my pc meets all the specs for Civ 4.

Everything was working great for the past few days, I was content checking out the different maps, the scenarios and the different civs. But I hadn't saved a game until yesterday. This morning I was keen on civving it up and expanding my Roman borders. So I load up my game and 10 minutes into the game from out of nowhere my pc reboots. So I reload Civ, load up the last autosave and within 5 minutes it reboots again.

Is it because I am playing a saved game?

I'm going to try a new game later today and see if the game crashes or not but for now I am stuck at work with Civ on the brain

 

[Eyemaze]

I really think something is going on with saves. I had no problems since release day purchase untila game last night which has the same recurring problems that cause CTDs. Don't have an ATI card. Do you guys all use the strategic layer? It wasn't until I used that last night that my problems started in this current game. Goping to see what happens with a new game after deleting cache.

 

[al_thor]

What do you mean by "strategic layer"? The gridlines?

 

[aquavit]

Just to add, I thought I'd give it another go. After moving one unit it crashed and I got the blue screen of death. The first time I've ever seen it after running XP for the past year or two. Amazing.

 

[Multi-Pass]

Just registered to say I'm experiencing this problem as well. My card is a GeForce 6600. Whenever I start or load a game, I can play for a 2-10 minute period before it freezes up and/or reboots on me.

 

[blaireri]

I've been having this same set of problems, but I think I found a workaround today. Try changing the AGP Speed setting to Off. I made that change this morning and played all day today without a single crash!

Here's how to do it on an ATI graphics card if you installed the ATI control panel - your mileage may vary...

1. Right click on the desktop and select Properties.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Click the SMARTGART tab.
5. Move the "Set AGP Speed" slider to the "off" position.
6. Click OK until you get back to the desktop.
7. Reboot.

You'll want to turn it back on for other games, but it doesn't seem to affect the performance at all on Civ IV. I'm fairly certain this worked for me since I was never able to play more than an hour without locking up or getting graphics corruption. I had the game running for over 12 hours today after changing this setting.

Good luck. Hope this helps someone.

So far this seems to be working for me (3 hours) on my Radeon 9800

 

[changas]

hey guys

i just bought this game as well

started it up

decided to have a go

works absolutely fine on small maps

then when we get to the larger ones

its loading...loading...loading then WHAM! hard reset or back to desktop

really beginning to annoy me now

obviously i'm not the only one with these problems!

AND i'm running 2 gigs of DDR400 ram, i've got a P4 3.4Ghz using a ASUS p4c800-e-d motherboard and a ATi x850.

Appears that this problem is somewhat exclusive to ATi cards?

 

[Zelgadis75]

Same problem here too ATI RADEON 9800 PRO and late game large map reboots and crashes, usually when diplomacy screen pops up. Im going to try the suggested solution, hope it works.