Help needed for back lock-up problem with Civ CTP

[ReginaRC1]

I would really, really appreciate it if someone could shed a little light on this situation.

Here I sat on one of my few days off lately and decided I needed some good civ-type action, so I thought I'd play my Civ CTP game. It'd been months since I last played (last July to be exact) so I was way overdue.

I went to start the game and it completely froze as soon as I hit the 'play' button. I couldn't ctrl-alt-del out of it or anything--the only choice I had was a cold re-boot. So, I re-booted and tried it again with the same result (yeah, I'm insane). Finally after three or four times of this I got to thinking about maybe why it would do this and the only thing I could think of was the updated version of DX I installed last September, which is something like DX 9.c. To me the next logical step seemed to be to uninstall the game and try re-installing it and see what happened.

Pretty much the same thing happened, only this time it was actually much worse. This time when I re-booted my PC, I got an error while loading Windows and was told I needed to re-start my computer, so I hit ctrl-alt-delete. Right away it came back on and wanted to start in Safe Mode, so I was thinking no problem! Re-start and everything should be okay. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. I re-started and got the same error message again, so basically we were right back to wash-rinse-repeat.

Ultimately I ended up formatting my hard-drive, and naturally have spent days in between working trying to get everything back on. I'm afraid to install Civ CTP for fear of running into the same problem again.

My question is, is this a known problem? If it is was it because of DX or something else? My system specs are as follows:

2.4-ghz Athlon processor on an Asus mobo
PNY GeForce 3 video
Onboard sound
512 megs DDR RAM
Win98SE

The only thing different about my computer now than last July was the updated DX which I need for another game.

Thank you so very much in advance for any help you can give me.

Signed, Regina, truly hoping my war walker days aren't over.

 

[ReginaRC1]

I know someone else is here--I can hear breathing!

Hmmm, funny title, huh? "Back" lock-up problem? It's actually supposed to be 'bad' lock-up problem. So, no one has a clue? Please, if someone has any idea I'd sure like to hear it.

 

[Martin Gühmann]

No problems here with DX 9.c, I needed it as well for another game, I had also to update my graphics drivers to make that game run properly. Maybe something you should consider as well.

-Martin

 

[ReginaRC1]

Thank you for replying!

Hmmm. I did update the drivers for the new game--wouldn't work properly without it, all kinds of funny-looking things everywhere.

 

[ReginaRC1]

I discovered more info so thought I'd post an update to this thread.

I don't think it was Civ CTP which ultimately caused my PC to need a clean Windows install. I'm now blaming that on another piece of software because after I formatted I did not re-install CTP and the same thing happened again.

HOWEVER, I still can't run CTP and I do believe it's an issue with my updated video card driver. I formatted my PC on Saturday and if I would've been thinking would have tried installing and running CTP before I updated the video driver but my thought processes were a little on the slow side that day. At any rate, I did install it after updating the driver and it was a no-go.

On the upside, Conquest of the New World runs now! LOL I had given up on that one about two or three years ago because I could install it and it would just wouldn't work. I could get sound but no more than a black screen. Ah well, I'll never get all of this figured.

Funny, isn't it, how there are so many new games on the market and with rare exceptions I pass them right over and go back to playing my old ones.