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

[Mogelvang]

Hi,

I still have problems. 'I have done all the driver update on my computer' Everytime i run the game it still just stop, when it comes to XML in the 'upstart'. What is wrong, i dont get any 'faults'.

I have the mobility 9700 128mb and have the 5.10 driver. I have done all with cache and ART0.fpk files. Check out the report!
Plz help me.

Mogelvang

 

[ashnak]

I have two computers where one has the problem and the other has not:

My desktop PC (Prescott 3.0GHz on Asus P4P800E-Deluxe with XFX 6800GT and 2GB memory) has problems with the introduction movie and the wonder movies. Else the game is playable.

Attached DxDiag.txt file for the desktop PC

My laptop PC (Dell Inspiron 6000 with Pentium M 740 processor, ATI X300 graphics (64MB) and 2.0GB memory) has no problem whatsoever with respect to the gameplay.

 

[marcos24]

Hi. I am still having the same problems after deleting the cache and running the PackBuild.exe. MY PROBLEMS are...i cannot see the cities, some terrains conditions, many images are flickering... After loading a saved file the game is out....

 

[yodapenny]

I am having the same problems as most of the people who have posted. Stuttering movies (no big), all of my leaders are just eyeballs & teeth, and the terrain is completely dark. As a vent - this really sucks! Turns me off from playing this game when & if it ever gets fixed.

 

[Mallek]

I've got a Radeon 9800 Pro - it can handle other games fine, but when I try to play Civ4, after about 10 minutes the screen freezes and reverts to Windows with a VPU Recover error message - if I'm lucky. Other times, the PC itself freezes, or I get a horrible mess on my monitor - vertical pink boxes down the entire screen, that sort of thing.

DXDiag.txt enclosed - please help

You have an ATI card my friend so try this and this should help

1. Go to the Windows Control Panel and access Add/Remove Programs

2. Uninstall Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 from your computer by clicking
Remove

3. Go to My Documents\My Games and delete the Civilization 4 folder

4. Select Start and click on Run

5. Go to c:\Windows\system32

6. Locate the file d3dx9_26.dll and DELETE it. If it is not present then
continue to step 9.

7. Restart your computer

8. Log back into your computer. NOTE: You must have administrator
privileges to install the game.

9. Return to Add/Remove Programs and locate the selection ATI Uninstall
Utility

If you do not have this option, proceed to this web site and follow the
instructions to remove your ATI drivers:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&fo
lderID=27
Proceed to Step 11.

10. Use the ATI Uninstall Utility to complete remove your ATI drivers. Be
sure to reboot your computer when it prompts you.

11. Go to http://www.ati.com and select the Drivers & Software option

12. Select Windows XP or 2000

13. Download the latest Display Driver and save it to your desktop. DO NOT
INSTALL IT!

14. Insert Disc 1 (labelled Install Disc) into your CD drive – this should
bring up the Autorun Screen – if not, go to My Computer and right click the
drive labeled Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 and select Autoplay

15. Click on Install

16. Select I Accept and allow the DirectX installation to proceed.

17. Agree to the Civ4 License Agreement and click Next

18. Since you had a problem with the initial installation it is required
that you perform an Express Installation. Once it is verified that the
problem is solved you can then re-install Civ4 to another directory.

19. Start the installation by clicking on Install

20. Start the installation and allow it to finish.

21. Launch Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 using the desktop shortcut.

22. At this point the game should fail to initialize with the following
error message.

23. Run the ATI Driver that you saved to your desktop and allow it to
install using all default settings.

24. Restart your computer.

25. Relaunch Sid Meier’s Civilization 4.

You should load into the game without error and after viewing the movies
see this screen.


If not, follow these instructions:

Windows XP Users Only (sorry, the 2000 version of the Unpack utility will
be made ASAP)

1. Download the PakBuild.zip file from the 2K Support Site. Download Now.

2. Run the EXE and select the Unpak option

3. Go to your Civ4 directory (default is C:\Program Files\Sid Meier's
Civilization 4\) and open up the Assets Directory. Click on the Art0.FPK
file and select Open. C:\Program Files\Sid Meier's Civilization
4\Assets\Art0.FPK

4. Browse to your Civ4 folder and click on Assets and click Ok

5. Once the unpack finishes, click on the Art0.FPK and press Ctrl-X (or
select Edit and then Cut).

6. Move up one directory level so that you are not in the Assets folder and
press Ctrl-V (or select Edit and then Paste).

The reason this step is important is that if you do not move the FPK file
from the Assets directory it will still find the file and the game will
continue to not work.

7. Run the game.

Hope that works ok

 

[Doobue]

I keep having problem with graphics at random times in the game. It's like the game freezes up on me and all my cites and units vanish, all I see is the land and the improvemts I've done to the land. After a few mins the screen returns to normal and contines but the problem keeps appearing and don't understand what is causeing it. When the game does this I am unable to take a screen shot to show what it is doing or do anything in the game but wait it out. I've emailed tech support over a week ago now and no responce from them.
I used to have sound trouble as well with the music and voices skipping but installing a new sound card fixed all that so now I need fixed my graphic problems.
Attached are my dxdiag and sysinfo files.

 

[Cyberstar]

Another one with movie stutters. The rest of the game seems to work okay. I used forceware 81.85 and had one massive crash when I traded for a world map that revealed most the the world to me. I switched to 71.77. I was able to play a complete game pretty well (standard world size), but still have the same movie/sound stutters every second or so and don't watch them. I hope one day I get to see them as they are meant to be.

Before I changed drivers, I would get a strange graphic error when I would zoom to world view. There were blue streaks covering the world with cloudes floating overhead. Couldn't see the world at all really. After the change, I could zoom out okay, but the resolution was quite low.

P4 3.0Ghz, 1G RAM, Virtual 2.5G, GF6200 128MB, should work fine. Overall, I guess I should feel lucky.

EDIT:: IT WORKS NOW!!
There are an overwhelming array of adjustments possible. I just tried to turn off the anti-aliasing in the game (from 2 to 0) and then my movies played glitch free at medium resolution.

 

[gusten]

I just want to say that a thing that came in to my mind.

Two years ago i bought a computer with a NVIDIA 5500.

Well, i learned the if I installed the driver package from the NVIDIA homepage, i got the wrong driver, and some games didn't work at all. I really didn't understand why. I had a NVIDIA card in the computer.

After talking to some of my fellow neard friends I learned that although it said on the specs. that I had a NVIDIA card, is was not the same card that u buy in the shop.

Some computer manufacturer have speciall deals with the grfx card manufactures, so what you get when buying a computer like mine, you do not get the same NVIDIA card thay you would have if you bought the card separaly. The solution to my prob was simpy to download a driver package from the computor manufactures.

Maybe that could be a solution for some of you guys...

 

[Geocat]

I've said this on other threads (but never attached my dxdiag file before) so here goes:

My problem was that the game would begin to load and get stuck on "Done" and then the music would progress but the screen would never change from saying "Done" and I would have to force quit.

I have a problem very very similar, almost exactly the same as this persons problem.

But,I can load the tutorial and everything there goes perfectly!! No glitches or anything! BUT when I try to play a normal single player game, like the same thing in example above happens, it lets me choose everything (picking leaders, etc) up intill its generating the world, but when I hit the play button the game freezes and im forced to reboot. Also the opening movies are choppy, but I could care less about that problem for now, its minor compared to my other one, I just wanna be able to play the game.

Oh and the microsoft site gave me this error message when I did an error report thing.
Error Message: STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (Q293078)

heres my dxdiag thing. my card is an diamond S80 128MB DDR Radeon 9200se PCI.
**important edit**
Hehe, I guess I kinda panicked when the game didnt work right off the bat after I had been looking forward to it for so long, I've calmed down today and tried some things I should of in the first place, Mainly Changed the games graphics to low (not inlucuding those check box's on the right) and now it works fine, Except for how the movies video and sound stutter every few seconds, I still want to fix that

 

[GenericKen]

I've got that yellow-grasslands/wierd seas bug. Running the 4.12 driver since the 4.10 driver gives me a failed to init renderer.

 

[rpriha]

(I posted this one already as a reply in another thread, but then I noticed this thread which seems to pull together various graphics bug reports, so I'll repost it here, hope this offends no-one.)

The problem: I can play only like 3-5 minutes before graphics get corrupted and system locks up. At some occasions audio is still playing.

Everything works normally (very quickly even), then without warning the screen becomes very corrupted. First you see very briefly (half a second) some random polygons being drawn all over, then the screen changes to have garbled pixels all over. Cursor may still move but is displayed as a square corrupted block. Alt-tab or anything else doesn't work, only thing you can do is to perform a hard reboot.

See the attached file civ4lockup-640.jpg for a screenshot, and DxDiag-rpriha.txt for DirectX diagnostics.

Hardware:
Athlon 64 / 3500+
Abit AV8-3rdEye motherboard
Gainward Geforce 6800GT, AGP
1GB of DDR400 memory
No overclocking of any kind

Software:
Windows XP with service pack 2, freshly installed last weekend
DirectX 9.0c
NVidia drivers 71.89, 81.87 and 81.94 tested.
Crashes at least with 71.89 and 81.94, 81.87 had the minimap/globe
corruption issue which is fixed in 81.94.

Other things that may relate to issue:
The graphics card is connected to two 1024x768 displays using nView Clone mode (A projector and a lcd monitor, that's why it's not in DualView mode, I never use them at same time). Haven't tried without clone mode yet, I guess I'll try it to rule that one out..

At least Doom 3, Far Cry, Civ 3, and The Sims 2 have been able to run happily all day long with this computer, so I guess a hardware problem is not likely.

If anyone from Firaxis is reading this, I'd be more than happy to collaborate with you to resolve this issue, in case the you're not able to repeat the problem yourself.

 

[Alexeyg]

I have such a problem with the game: it loads and works in menu just fine, I select the world size, the leader and press "start game". Loading process is going normally too till the end, but when I press "play game" button, the game crashes... Simply black screen and annoying sound and nothing helps - I have to restart my computer.
I have 1.7 Ghz, raden 8500 64mb, 256 ram, all the drivers are the newest. I understand that my PC is hardly even meeting minimum requirements, but the game is not working even with the lowest settings and on the smallest map, it simply does not start. Does anybody had such a problem, what could it be?

I got nearly the same system in my hands (even a little worse - 1.2 Ghz), and I have the same problem - it looks like monitor stops receiving signal from PC when actual game starts. BUT - there's a small hint
1) It's not a hang-up, PC still responds to Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Alt-Del and you can safely exit game
2) I found out that this problem only happens if I try to play for Americans (Roosevelt). If I choose to play for Russians(Peter) - I GOT NO PROBLEMS AT ALL!!! The game runs smooth, no hang-ups, crashes, etc. Of course, I've tryed to play for a couple of hours only - but I even got some in-game movies, and it looks ok

 

[Blackthorn27]

Apart from the annoying intro movie periodic stutter problem, which is a minor issue for me, things were going okay playing the game until I got to the '100 turns to go' stage, at which point the computer began to get bogged down with having to access the hard drive. Finally, after the hard drive was just going crazy (making the game virtually unplayable), the computer crashed and I got pulled out into Windows at something like 88 turns left.

I'll have another go at finishing the game tonight.

OMG, though, but this is a brilliant game to play - probably the best game I've ever owned in terms of gameplay. Whatever the technical difficulties, I don't want to give the impression that I don't like playing the game. CivIV grabs your attention and you just can't pull away - there's always just that one more thing you want to do before finally grabbing some sleep.

I'm not going to go through the sort of tweak-frenzy that a lot of people seem to be doing to try and get the game to run more smoothly, because that my cause more problems than it solves (basically, I don't know what I'm doing). I'll just have to patient, like the rest of us, and wait for the first patch that hopefully will sort these technical issues out.

View attachment DxDiag.txt

 

[cardsfan]

Does anyone know of a fix for the issue with the map only showing 2 food on each square? Several other people have reported this, but I have yet to see a solution. I also have the choppy video, and the game doesn't exactly run smoothly. Suppose we'll just have to wait for a patch to come out.

As for the black maps and eyes/mouth only problem, I had the same problems until I upgraded my video card. Course, I didn't bother to check the requirements and tried to run it on integrated graphics; I don't usually play enough games to require a card.
Specs:
Celeron D 2.4 gHz (runs slow but runs all the same)
512 mb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce MX4000 128 mb graphics (new, fixed graphic issues)

 

[FLJeepGuy]

I'm experiencing game slow downs and video/sound stuttering. So far no other graphic anomalies. I've also tried updating the bink dll and unpacking the art file with no help.

 

[MobsterRobster]

When i play the game, everything is fine except two things.

1. The intro movie skips and sound like it has the hiccups.
2. My cities/villages/farms/city name..etc. appear either as black boxes, or dont show up at all.

i tried that dxdiag stuff, but im so bad with computers aarg.

any suggestions?

 

[Namrog]

I am unable to play my newly purchased Civ4 due to what is apparently a common problem: error message “Failed to Initialize Renderer”

I have followed the instructions at the support site with no apparent effect. http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_ati.htm

I ran the DirectX Diagnostics, the results are attached DxDiag.txt

I called tech support at 1-866-219-9839 but after a few minutes on hold I was disconnected.

Any help would be delightful. It's been a long time since a computer game would not run...I thought those dark days were long past.

Dave Gorman

 

[siebertt]

Okay, I've got the same problem as some of the people here.
1) Terrain-except for forests-is all black except for resources.
2) Leaderheads are only eyes, mouth, and a few other pieces.
3) City names, populations, etc that are listed in the map under the city are messed up.
4) Sound and video is choppy.
I've updated the video card and put the graphics and sound on low, but it didn't change anything.
Any ideas?

 

[preycor]

1) Terrain is all black except for resources.
2) Leaderheads are only eyes, mouth, and a few other pieces.
3) Sound and video is choppy.

Same problem here. I've checked to make sure I have the most up to date BIOS, drivers, etc and Windows is also patched up to date.

Of particular interest in this case I think is this from dxdiag:

DirectDraw test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 7 test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 8 test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 9 test results: All tests were successful.

*edit*

Never mind, I see now that my series of gfx controllers (Intel 8xxx) does not support TnL. Pity, really... but I wanted to get a decent controller anyway - Civ4 just gave me the excuse I needed. ;-)

 

[Jove]

Installing drivers, adjusting settings, etc. eliminated most of the graphics problems for me, although I would still get 'degredation' of gfx after a while, like garbled icons, funny terrain... I couldn't get control of the crash though. 6 or 7 wide patchwork vertical cyan rainbows, and a square patch where the cursor was. Total lock-up, reboot. This never happened until Civ4, so I thought that was it.

Well, I got the same crash outside of Civ4 today. I have a new motherboard, CPU, and GeForce4 ti4200. Thing is, the graphics card is used (but free), maybe there's something wrong with it... How do I figure out if there is something wrong with my new hardware?