Graphics/Sound Problems? - Please post your DX Logs.

[Gunky1]

Hi,
Having problems with the gameplay, even after upgrading my pc.
When i first installed Civ iv found that it was chewing ram, getting "low phsical memory" messages, upgraded ram to 1024 meg, set agp apeture to 128, have installed most recent patches, running Nvidea Geforce 6200 graphics card on a Pentium 4 2.8ghz processor in winxp pro with sp2.
Initially the game appears to run fine, but after you have been playing a while it slows right down, graphics can freezefor about 10seconds at a time, and the wonders movies can be very jumpy, has even blue screened the pc a couple of times. Can you suggest any improvement
Have included dxdiag text as requested

 

[Zydor]

Gunky1

Doubtless you have loaded etc many times. But as you have indicated the old memory issues, do a total purge of Civ from PC in detail, as per thread below (post 3). Then post again if still issues as a separate thread in the forum

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3522803#post3522803

Regards
Zy

 

[iikuuk]

Hi

I have the latest drivers, and civiv was working up until the latest patch, but now i cannot see the menu (and fonts in other places) when i start the game. i was trying to do all i found in the forums, but none helped. Please advise something.

thanks

 

[Fallout31]

My game is very slow and choppy. I don't have the "recommended" video cards, but it is 64 MB. Please help! Thanks!!!

 

[greenterer]

After the game loads, and the introductin 2K blurb plays, my graphics simply stop working. I arrive at a screen that has black on the top, black on the bottom, and a jumpled mess of colors in the middle, with the civ music playing in the background. This is exactly the same problem that I had with civ 3, and was able to fix it by running the game in a compatability mode for windows 98, even though I have xp. That hasn't worked in this case.I have the most recent patches for my nvidia card and for civ 4. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I would be tearing my hair out at this point, but I have so little left, that I"m afraid I'd soon go bald.

 

[flubio]

I was having engine initiation troubles, then I followed the oficial Civ page support guide for ATI problems ( upgraded the drive re installed the game) and it worked.

But it worked with the Black Terrain problem, wich I solved by downloading the patch from the game's upload device.

The game ran well, a bit slow with the game telling me that my pc was below the requirements so I could have some performance issues, but ran (more than once). The only problem was that the right part of the image, where the minimap and other stuff should be was out of the screen.
Since my english isn´t good enough to illustrate the problem I run the game to get a screenshot. However it didn´t initiate the engine again. I tried rebooting and nothing. this is the message I get:
Error: creation failed: invalid 3D device type.

I know my system doesn´t match the requirements ( It has Radeon 7000 (64 MB) and the game asks for a 7500 and only 256 MB RAM for XP) , but it worked four or five times before stopping, so there must be a way to get it back working.

Thanks for you time.

Greetings,
Flubio

View attachment DXdiag.txt

 

[Timonen]

I´m having problems with starting the game.

Installation went well and I did try to load the game...
But when I started the game, loading crashed when there came box :"check XML". After that screen went black ja machine rebooted...

Then I installed patch 1.52, but there was no help at all.
Only difference was that loading did fine that "check XML", but when there came this "init MP/Voice", result was again rebooting...

I have now unistalled the game and done as told by support 2kGames (ATI Graphics card). Result: loading crash at "check XML" and rebooting.

Oh, I almost forgot... I also loaded Catalyst 4.12, but it helped nothing... So I´m back using Catalyst 5.13.

And I`ve the DVD-ROM.


P4 3,2GHz
1024 RAM
Connect3D Radeon X600Pro 256Mb
Realtek HD Audio
DirectX 9.0c
XP Home SP2 (Fin)
I have all the latest drivers.

I attach here my DX.log.

 

[Zydor]

Timonen

Very strange, this sounds like one of the early hassles that was supposed to be fixed by later patches.

Go to:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135231 Post 2 - xml parser error

You download the MSXML Util - the link is in the post

The fix there was v successful at the time

Regards
Zy

 

[flubio]

Reinstalling the driver made the game run again. Here screenshots of my problem. Before was with the right side of the screen, now is the bottom:

 

[Timonen]

Timonen

Very strange, this sounds like one of the early hassles that was supposed to be fixed by later patches.

Go to:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135231 Post 2 - xml parser error

You download the MSXML Util - the link is in the post

The fix there was v successful at the time

Regards
Zy

I downloaded MSXML 3.0 SP5 and also MSXML 3.0 SDK.
After that I rebooted my PC and tried to load the game, but it happened as before, "init MP/Voice" and rebooting...

 

[Zydor]

Ok- post a new thread in the Tech forum, reference your thread above (post 350) you'll get picked up from there

Regards
Zy

 

[sendô]

Not entirely sure whether I'm having a graphics card problem or not, but when I open the game, rather than take me to the main menu, it just shows me a blank screen. Can still hear the music though. Any suggestions please?

P4 3GHz
512 RAM
Mobility Radeon 9000
DirectX 9.0c
XP Professional
(all specs seem fine to me)

 

[Calder]

I'm having random occurances of either total freezes or CTD with error message (video card has run out of memory). I've been lucky enough to eventually get a error report sent off to Microsoft. I rang the technical support 0900 number and was advised that there is no easy fix in my circumstances and the best bet is to read the forums and hopefully someone has a similar set up to me with the same problem. It may be a tweak needed in the BIOS.
Please note that I downloaded the new patch v1.52 as soon as I installed the game out of the box. So I don't know if it may have run ok before patching or not. After patching I played the tutorial without any problems. The next day I downloaded the NVidia patch v81.98 for my GeForce 7800GTX card, so I can't really compare game performance before doing that. All game settings were on high by default, and I applied Antialiasing x4. Played my first single game and got to about 300BC when my monitor made a loud zapping noise and the game just froze solid. Had to kickstart the computer, then changed all settings to low, with low res textures. Reloaded game, performance wise I thought I had solved it. Played a full 2 days with no problems. Then it would happen again at random times, usually when the city build menu pops up giving me the options what to build next. Have no problems scrolling, and wonder movies and sound are excellent. The monitor noise at crash is random as well. There have been a couple of instances when the computer rebooted itself.
Hope someone can help.
My system: AMD Athlon 64 4000, MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum m/b, GeForce 7800GTX graphics, Windows XP SP2
Attached DxDiag file (hopefully)
Edit. Can't find attach files anywhere.

 

[asmodai]

There have been a couple of instances when the computer rebooted itself.

I am inclined to blame your power supply unit (PSU). Are you sure you meet the requirements power consumption wise? Note that some brands are very bad in that they have issues supplying a continuous steady power. One of my own preferred brands is Enermax.

That, or something goes wrong with the videocard, although I am not sure if the drivers have watchdog timers that can hard reset a system when they're wedged.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php might be useful.

Also, how is the temperature within your system? Does the airflow function correctly?

 

[belbearvan]

I am using Civ 4 on a single monitor (tried dual but it only starts up in one, so switched the display directly to single) with a Matrox Millenium G400 card. I believe (not sure) that the card does not support T&L but haven't found any changes to the civ4.ini file that can help (followed many suggestions from the Black terrain forum but nothing seems to work).
The game starts with extreme stuttering in the initial movies. The actual game has the Black terrain problem (I can see overlaying graphics like forest, waves, special terrain but all base terrain is black) and it runs exceedingly slow. I allowed Civ4 to set it up for minimum system/graphics.
Regardless, any help would be appreciated, please find my dxdiag below.

BelBearvan

 

[prawnstar69]

I have a strange problem, I thought it had cleared up when I downloaded Catalyst drivers v5.13, but it just cropped up on me again.

I'll be playing the game just fine, no performance issues what so ever, then an "ingame" video will play, such as the video of a Civ leader when they contact you, or the videos which play when you found a religion etc and the video will have black "artifacts" and not play properly. Usually when this happens one of two things will happen...

Either the game will freeze straight away, then my monitor will go black, and then set itself onto standby. Requiring me to restart the PC as I can't alt-tab, ctrl-alt-del or whatever.

Or, the game will continue for a few turns and then do the same as above usually after a turn or two, not triggered by a video.

On one occasion my computer just restarted itself when an ingame video appeared.

Finally, it doesn't happen every time a video plays, only on odd occasions with the ingame ones. It's happened about 3 times in the last week and I play Civ a fair bit, so it's not that frequent, just annoying as I lose any progress.

edit - I have v1.52. Forgot to mention that. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Warriors29]

Whenever I play my game the only problem I seem to have is with the City Title Box. It is just a bunch of light blue squares where the City Name and City Information is supposed to be. Any way to fix this?

 

[killthecar]

When I play a game, all I see are the units, things on top of the land(I don't see any terrain),citys,the waves, everything except the terrain. My build version is 1.52. I'm also not willing to pay for anything to fix this or upgrade my computer, just want a patch or a download.
Edit: Couldn't upload dxdiag file

 

[Calder]

I am inclined to blame your power supply unit (PSU). Are you sure you meet the requirements power consumption wise? Note that some brands are very bad in that they have issues supplying a continuous steady power. One of my own preferred brands is Enermax.

That, or something goes wrong with the videocard, although I am not sure if the drivers have watchdog timers that can hard reset a system when they're wedged.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php might be useful.

Also, how is the temperature within your system? Does the airflow function correctly?

When I was researching for what I wanted for my upgrade I was initially concerned about my PSU. But it was bought new just last August (old won blew) before I even knew I would need to upgrade later to play Civ4. I don't know the brand, all I know it's a 350W which the technician said is ample for what I'm using, and AMD recommend at least 350W to run on this processor. Both CPU and graphics card have good cooling. eg graphics card always runs below 59C (core slowdown threshold is 115C). I can feel the airflow at the back of the box and its not even warm.
Hopefully here is my DxDiag attachment:

 

[Calder]

Also, how is the temperature within your system? Does the airflow function correctly?

I've just rung the guy who installed my new system and he was thinking of adding an extra fan at the back but didn't have one in stock at the time. When I told him about my problems playing Civ4, he's now going to install an extra fan and well then know if these crashes were hardware related.