Here's what I did to make it work

[Mauri]

Ok, at first the game didn't start and when it did it crashed or just freezed. I did the following:

-Unpacked Art0.pfk (instructions here)
-Edited CivilizationIV.ini so I wouldn't see any in-game movies
-The ThemeParseLog in the main folder of the game said "Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga" so I copied the file from its location to civ4/Hud/
-I also updated my geforce3 drivers

After this the game started ok but I still had problems with graphics. I couldn't see buttons and all the menus were really messy and every once in a while it started flickering and I even got a blue screen error three times.

I started studying what causes all this and I did something that I should have done before installing the game: I cleaned the registry with a cleaner program.

I also reinstalled directx since it was considered to have caused the blue screen error.

After these steps the game runs fine. I played 10 hours yesterday and I dind't have any problems at all. I'm going to start the game now and try if it works with the in-game movies., I really want to see them.

 

[BleckLord]

What are you using to clean the registry?

edit: Thanks

 

[Mauri]

What are you using to clean the registry?

EasyCleaner

 

[vodkamattvt]

Probably not so much the registry cleaner as it is reinstalling DirectX, Ill give that a try.