Game suddenly crashes

[Yanez]

same problem here, game works perfect but suddently crashes to desktop or reboots my pc. Also when the wonder movie shows up , the song of the wonder gets broken every 2 seconds. Hurry up with the F-ing patch, at least fix this and then work on the game .

 

[Zelgadis75]

Tried the suggested fix Method and it did nothing. I tried to load a save that ws causing me trouble and halfway through the load got the Blue screen of death., Im just going to shelve this game until the patch comes out

 

[sivlardemalle]

*EDIT*

MAde a thread for it

 

[changas]

i just installed the ati omega drivers (5.10a) and the game is running fine now.

i haven't had a crash for a while now (3-4 hours).

 

[Sawdustdood]

Last night, I was at wit's end, and I installed the Nvidia Omega drivers. My save game that was crashing every 1-2 turns, ended up being playable for another 30 turns, to victory, after the installation of the drivers. Yes, they're "older" than the latest, but they seemed to resolve other problems, including BSOD, choppiness, wonder movies, and what seemed to actually be AUDIO problems, among other things. I even used the drivers to overclock w/ no impact to stability.

MB: Asus A8V Deluxe
CPU: Athlon64 3000+ (overclocked)
GPU: MSI FX5900XT (overclocked)
OS: WinXP SP2

My sister was having the same problems with her setup on a Dell w/ a generic Nvidia 6200. Hopefully this will fix that situation as well.

Install dem' drivers!

[NEW]

Dell Dimention 8100
GeForce 6200

confirmed that NVidia Omega drivers fixed the crashing and improved overall choppy/crummy performance.

-T

 

[Sgt.Keel]

Trying the Omega drivers right now (Radeon 9600 Pro). It definitely runs much smoother and more fluently, don't know for how long, though ...we'll see.

Yours
Markus

 

[GertFroebe]

Is there any word from the developers, that they are working on a patch? Did they make any statement at all??

 

[gnosis]

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.

I can confirm that this does seem to help. My experience:

- Game would "randomly" freeze my PC solid, usually with a blank screen. Hard reboot was the only way out.
- Freezing seemed to occur mostly when Diplomacy screens would pop up. But freezes also occurred at other times...I couldn't determine a pattern.
- I figured it was a DirectX problem. I really really wanted to play, so I went so far as to reformat and reinstall XP.
- Installed all the latest drivers for nForce chipset and Radeon 9000, etc. Installed DirectX9c from M$ web site, but Civ didn't seem to like it. Had to run the DirectX installer from the game disk. It didn't seem to do much, but after that the game ran.
- No effect. Game still locked the PC after a few minutes of play.

After turning AGP off in Catalyst Control Panel:

- When I tried to load an autosaved game from earlier, the application crashed back to desktop, which had NEVER happened before. PC didn't lock, but the game died. This happened twice.
- Started a new game and was able to play for 2 hours. After 2 hours, the game did go black and lock the PC.
- After reboot, was able to load autosaved game and play for another 2 hours with no crash.
- These long periods of play were much longer than any before, so I think it's likely that turning off AGP had some effect on something.
- Saved game and went to bed. We'll see this eve if I can resume.

Note that I noticed NO decrease in performance after turning AGP off. The opening movie played all the way through and all leader heads and Wonder movies played just fine.

Hope this helps others...and I hope the devs are reading!

-G

PS: my setup:
Older MSI board with nForce 1 chipset
Athlon 1800+
1gig RAM
Radeon 9000 128meg video
WinXP pro SP2, fresh install, fully patched and prodded

 

[onedreamer]

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?

in fact, I immediatly tried it, but it didn't work. I still think these 2 categories of problems are not related.

 

[onedreamer]

I can confirm that this does seem to help. My experience:

- Game would "randomly" freeze my PC solid, usually with a blank screen. Hard reboot was the only way out.
- Freezing seemed to occur mostly when Diplomacy screens would pop up. But freezes also occurred at other times...I couldn't determine a pattern.
- I figured it was a DirectX problem. I really really wanted to play, so I went so far as to reformat and reinstall XP.
- Installed all the latest drivers for nForce chipset and Radeon 9000, etc. Installed DirectX9c from M$ web site, but Civ didn't seem to like it. Had to run the DirectX installer from the game disk. It didn't seem to do much, but after that the game ran.
- No effect. Game still locked the PC after a few minutes of play.

[...]

Well, I cannot confirm it.
Also, the problems you described are different from the quit to desktop one that is the topic of this discussion. I don't experience any of the problems that you or a few others described but I do quit to desktop without any apparent reason quite often, and the AGP setting doesn't change it. Please open another thread with the description of your problems and possible fixes, otherwise this one will only end up in a useless mess.

 

[marius4143]

Well, I cannot confirm it.
Also, the problems you described are different from the quit to desktop one that is the topic of this discussion. I don't experience any of the problems that you or a few others described but I do quit to desktop without any apparent reason quite often, and the AGP setting doesn't change it. Please open another thread with the description of your problems and possible fixes, otherwise this one will only end up in a useless mess.

The first 3 comments in this thread:


While playing the game it just dies and goes to desktop or completly restart the computer. While the game is working it runs very well...

I have an ATI 9600 ad the same thing happens too me, mostly a full computer reboot. Game runs perfectly until the crash.

Same here. Mostly the game process just vanishes, and I start it again. But about 20% of the crashes are Blue Screen of Death.


From my post: I was never able to play more than an hour without locking up or getting graphics corruption.

I failed to mention in my original post that I also had random reboots. I've been a programmer for 20 years, and in my experience, a bug that causes a reboot can sometimes cause the computer to freeze, and vice versa. Those types of bugs are often one and the same.

In any case, I no longer have any of the issues, INCLUDING the issues mentioned by the original poster, after my proposed workaround. I'm sorry that my fix didn't work for you, and that you are unable to see the relationship between my post and topic of the thread.

 

[Sgt.Keel]

Also, the problems you described are different from the quit to desktop one that is the topic of this discussion.[...]Please open another thread with the description of your problems and possible fixes, otherwise this one will only end up in a useless mess.

Er, if you would read the original starting post of this thread, it clearly states that the game "either quits to desktop or reboots the PC", so I honestly don't see your problem (apart from the problem we all have in commmon, of course, called Civilization 4 ). This stuff is, so far, all on topic and whether or not crashes/graphics lockups/reboots are all symptoms of the same core problem or not, only time or Firaxis will tell .

Yours Markus

 

[gnosis]

Well, I cannot confirm it.
Also, the problems you described are different from the quit to desktop one that is the topic of this discussion. I don't experience any of the problems that you or a few others described but I do quit to desktop without any apparent reason quite often, and the AGP setting doesn't change it. Please open another thread with the description of your problems and possible fixes, otherwise this one will only end up in a useless mess.

Well, uh, excuse me for trying to help.

The topic of this thread is "Game suddenly crashes" and folks are describing several different forms of crash...game freeze, kick to desktop, spontaneous reboot, etc. I feel quite peachy posting my experiences here. I would say "Game Suddenly Crashes" is quite descriptive of my problem!

Sorry this particular solution didn't help you, but it helped me and I'm glad the original guy told us about it. I posted my results to try to help the other poor bastards who spent $50 for this buggy release.

 

[Sgt.Keel]

Trying the Omega drivers right now (Radeon 9600 Pro). It definitely runs much smoother and more fluently, don't know for how long, though ...we'll see.

...relatively long :-/. Played about 100 years from ~1480 to ~1590, not sure how many turns. All ran smoothly, then (luckily only) a crash to dekstop. Oh well, but it was fun playing a while for a change.

 

[aquavit]

...relatively long :-/. Played about 100 years from ~1480 to ~1590, not sure how many turns. All ran smoothly, then (luckily only) a crash to dekstop. Oh well, but it was fun playing a while for a change.

Yeah, Omega drivers upped the amount of time before a crash. Before it crashed in 1-2 minutes now it's about 15-20 minutes. Still even with Omega drivers I either get the blue screen of death or a total reboot. Haven't yet crashed to the desktop.

 

[Toe Blake]

Yeah, Omega drivers upped the amount of time before a crash. Before it crashed in 1-2 minutes now it's about 15-20 minutes. Still even with Omega drivers I either get the blue screen of death or a total reboot. Haven't yet crashed to the desktop.

Ditto. Sort of. Omega Drivers seem to help; certainly they do give more play time. I experience very little stuttering, but have seen weird graphics instead. Everything works for awhile and then < POOF > there I am on the desktop. Thankfully no BSOD yet.

And yes, everything is up-to-date, patched, cleaned and tweaked. Speaking of which, I also delete the cache EVERY time I restart the game.

< Sigh > Looks like a real fun game... sure would like to play it for longer than 15-20 minutes at a time!

 

[Doggpound]

AMD 3200
9800xt 128
1g ram

Crashes to desktop, sharding pixels, blackened terrain.


One crucial thing I've noticed is I can play just fine for about the first 50 turns maybe? An occasional crash, but still a playable game.

But once I hit the Modern Era and start rolling out Tanks, Gunships etc, I crash almost every turn. Leading up to that I see the crashes starting more and more frequently.

It also seems people are having the same 'late civ' crashes based on the posts like 'I can play a few hours and them BOOM starts crashing'


Bottom line---it's either the other civs and you have so much going on late in the game it's too much to handle or it's some unit/terrain combo that's causing it to dump out.

 

[nvnmula]

Just so you know, all the crashes and reboots I was having were solved by setting more conservative timings for my RAM on the BIOS.

My MSI motherboard has an option for auto setting RAM timings, and the options are something like: fast, turbo, ultra. I don't remember the order or the exact names, but I had previously set the timings at the fastest one, and I lowered them to the one in the middle.

The CTD and reboots went from 1 every 1-15 minutes to absolutely none.

I'm not saying that this is exactly where the games problem lies, or that this will work for everyone, as most people don't ever change those settings.

I'm just saying this worked for me, and didn't want to save this info just for myself.
Obviously, YMMV

So if you have changed your RAM settings... you should know what to do in your BIOS

Greetings
nvn

 

[j45kilo10]

Yeah, I have the same problem... except I dont notice it happening with diplomacy, it happens at random times during gameplay, has happened while cycling through cities that need new construction, while scrolling the map looking at what is going on, during the other civ's turns, etc.

Radeon X700 256MB (Omega 2.6.75a)
Dual 3.4 Ghz processors
1 gig RAM

 

[onedreamer]

The first 3 comments in this thread:


While playing the game it just dies and goes to desktop or completly restart the computer. While the game is working it runs very well...

I have an ATI 9600 ad the same thing happens too me, mostly a full computer reboot. Game runs perfectly until the crash.

Same here. Mostly the game process just vanishes, and I start it again. But about 20% of the crashes are Blue Screen of Death.


From my post: I was never able to play more than an hour without locking up or getting graphics corruption.

I failed to mention in my original post that I also had random reboots. I've been a programmer for 20 years, and in my experience, a bug that causes a reboot can sometimes cause the computer to freeze, and vice versa. Those types of bugs are often one and the same.

In any case, I no longer have any of the issues, INCLUDING the issues mentioned by the original poster, after my proposed workaround. I'm sorry that my fix didn't work for you, and that you are unable to see the relationship between my post and topic of the thread.

First of all, what you quoted was not an answer to your post, and I find it extremely unpolite to use it in this way.
Second, I don't care how long have you been a programmer, and I might add that it's well known here that programmers are not exactly geeks in systems administration. An OS freeze is quite different from a program crash that is blatantly OS-independant since it doesn't cause any error, or a system reboot. The problem that I experience and that the original poster as well as many other experience, is definitely not an OS freeze, and anyways it's been already proven not only by me that your proposed solution works only for your own problems. So why the heck do you insist in trolling this thread ? Please open your own thread where you describe your own problems EXACTLY, and the solution that you found for them. Thank you.