hard disk sound - pc freeze

[MSaxp]

Whenever i try to play civ4 my hard disk keeps making a sound like the one it does just before shutting down. like moving to standby. it only does that when i play civ4, all the other games play fine. after some time it freezes for good and i need to restart my pc so it is impossible to play. i tried re-installing the game but no luck... any ideas? thank you

Mike

 

[crunch]

Probably: you lack memory. As the game progresses, Civ4 needs an increasing amount of memory. After a while, Civ4 needs to swap some memory on your hard drive. Later you can run out of both physical RAM and virtual RAM and the computer slows down massively, ultimately either Civ or system crashes.

Remedies:
- free some memory - close all unnecessary applications before running Civ
- play smaller maps
- get more RAM

 

[MSaxp]

well, i have 512mb and i dont have problems with any other game...like halflife2 or grand theft auto san andreas...

 

[MSaxp]

oh and by the way it makes the sound from the very first round of the game... i can barely play 4-5 rounds before it freezes

 

[Russe]

I think it is the power supply or hard drive itself. Probably PS. What exactly your system specs are?

 

[MSaxp]

its an old Athlon xp 2000+ 512mb ram on an asus A7V8X m/b... the power supply though is new and is an Antec 480W silent

 

[auldian]

its an old Athlon xp 2000+ 512mb ram on an asus A7V8X m/b... the power supply though is new and is an Antec 480W silent

Mike,
Post your DxDiag.txt if you would. It'll give folks a bit more to look over specific to your rig.
Good luck.

 

[MSaxp]

i doubt my dxdiag is going to help...i believe the problem lies somewhere between my disk and my m/b... could it be that i havent used the master/slave selection at the back of the disk and i have just removed the thingy? i think i should start by checking the connections first...

 

[auldian]

Before you wrench on it make sure you're following the steps in the "Fix-It List" that's stickied.
You should defrag your drive often ... even daily; you have one partition for what looks like a pretty busy rig. If your pagefile isn't fixed-size and contiguous you may want to make it so. You're at the minimum supported RAM for this game so you'll want to make as many improvements as you can even if they're minor.
Any recent drivers for your Avance audio at your m/b site?
There are some newer nVidia drivers that helped some folk per this thread. There are probably newer still on their site. Others may have more relevant comments about them (enemy card in my box).
Good luck.