graphics error of some sort i gather

[visithwy61]

I've been playing this game with no problem for about a year now with no problems and vanilla Civ4 before that. All of a sudden I've been getting these errors as the program crashes.
First one that pops up is-

Error: Failed to allocate video memory. Please try reducing your graphics settings. File:\main\Civilization4\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\CoreLibs\NiDX(VBManager.cpp, Line:1019

Right after I click OK on that message this pops up-

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Runtime Error!Program: ...er's Civilization4\BeyondtheSword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information.

Anybody see this before and know how to fix it. If you haven't seen it but know how to fix it that woud be just as swell.
Here's hoping.

Edit- For the record I knocked all the graphics settings to medium and turned off movies and it still crashes.

 

[evanevanevans]

I just got exactly the same thing last night...the only thing different seemd to be trying to load the HOF mod ... ?

 

[ori]

what graphics card are you using? how much memory does it have? is the driver uptodate? what operating system are you using? how much memory does your computer have?

 

[jlindy]

I get the same thing as well. I'm running an Nvidia 8600 w/512mb of memory. WinXP sp2. Computer has 4gb ram (xp only sees 3gb but that's another issue).

 

[ori]

is your driver and DirectX up to date?

 

[goonie61]

Yes i am getting the exact same thing, i have even reduced graphic settings to low. Later tonight i will try updating directx

 

[jlindy]

is your driver and DirectX up to date?

...yup....

 

[ori]

this is weird - in your case it should not be a memory problem at all - so I guess it is some weird compatibility problem between the card and the game

Edit: I see that Aspyr has been having troubles with NVIDIA 8600 (i.e. crashes) for their Mac ports of the game, I wonder if that is a more general problem

 

[jlindy]

this is weird - in your case it should not be a memory problem at all - so I guess it is some weird compatibility problem between the card and the game

Edit: I see that Aspyr has been having troubles with NVIDIA 8600 (i.e. crashes) for their Mac ports of the game, I wonder if that is a more general problem

It very well may be a bigger problem with the Nvidia card, but the good news is I found what I think is a cure. At least this worked for me.

what I did was to follow the advice in this post http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=225205
Pay particular attention to editing the boot.ini with the /Userva=xxxx switch as well as the /3gb switch. Be very careful about editing the boot.ini,
mistakes here can cause your system to not boot at all!

So far all is well I'm currently playing a game with 14 civs on a large map and haven't experienced any problems so far even in the late game! I'll be playing the 18 civ huge map which may be the tale of the tape.

 

[jlindy]

I'll be playing the 18 civ huge map which may be the tale of the tape.

As a follow on I played the huge map with the graphics level set to medium. I played as Roosevelt. Kicked butt on Montezuma and Huayna Capac thus having both North and South America. I put down 25 cities, and was setting up Australia to be a colony. About the only open land left on the map was South Africa. The game ran very smoothly albeit started to slow down some after an hour or so of play. Before I did the editing a session on this map would have lasted about 15 minutes and ended with a crash and the rather rude memory error messages even with the graphics level set to low. Now I'm going to have to see how well it does on one of the giganto grosso extra huge maps

(BTW, I won the game with a religious/diplomatic victory)

 

[goonie61]

I reinstalled BTS and the patch, restarted my computer, and upgraded the page file to 5000 and now the game no longer fives the MAF! I have been playing RFC on low settings and I am America now nearing the 19th century. I love this game