Locks up between 2-5 minutes into game

[godochaos]

I wanted to add something strange to this....
I got tired of trying to get it to work and so I went to play the 3D heavy Planetside MMO game. It did the exact same thing. Blank screen with a monitor click a few minutes into the game.
I asked myself what has changed on my machine since Planetside worked fine 2 days ago?: The answer is Directx from that Civilization cd, and the Nvidia video drivers I updated.

PS i tried a brand new 17 LCD monitor just to see if it was the monitor, no its not the monitor. I checked the fan on the video card and its spinning and clean.

 

[ReconSOC]

Crimson Shadow -

You and I are in the same boat. That is the exact screen corruption I get and I also get in with FEAR. It is totally RANDOM as far as I can tell. I have been trying to figure this out for days, contacting FEAR tech support and even my video card manufacutrer. I have contacted 2kgames but no response yet. After updating drivers and doing temperature tests and numerous other things, I finally reinstalled Windows XP last night. Even after a format and a fresh install it STILL happens.

My machine specs are:

P4 3.0 Ghz w/HT
Abit VT7 MB with Via PT880 using latest Via Hyperon Drivers
BFG 6800GT OC using the lastest Nvidia beta drivers 81.87
SB Audigy running lastest drivers
Win XP SP2
2 gigs of RAM
Direct X 9.0c - all tests pass

This does NOT happen in BF2 running at everything on high or Q4 running everything on Ultra. Each of these games - one DirectX based and one OpenGL based run flawlessly for hours. Both are system hogs and high intensity graphics. So, why does it happen in FEAR and Civ 4??? I am at a total loss.

 

[ReconSOC]

I am going to try to DL Direct X 9.0c from Microsoft and reinstall, perhaps something is wrong with the Direct X that shipped with FEAR and Civ 4.

 

[Raezal]

I seem to have just been lucky getting it to run after changing the autosave value. Civ 4s version of DX does seem suspect as I've encountered several video card lock ups outside of Civ 4 since I installed the new DX. The crashes are truly a pain as I have to unplug the molex connector to my graphics card to drain its power before I can use it again. I'm going to try system restoring to a earlier date and then installing Civ without the new DX. I don't even see why it's needed as I definitely had DX9.0c installed already and was still prompted to update DX during the Civ install.

 

[ReconSOC]

Turning Autosave off did not help me.

I spoke with 2kgames tech support a few moments ago. They have no idea...

 

[Raezal]

I should have made it clearer in my last post but autosaving didn't help me either. I got lucky and had it run for a decent period after making that change but it was only coincidence. I think my problem at least is related to the graphics subsystem as it has actually prevented me from using the graphics card until all power is drained from it after a crash.

 

[lordqarlyn]

For some people, this problem could be caused by a memory leak. Others are describing similar problems on other threads and I am also experiencing this problem as well. When your game locks up, check the HD light, if its lit solid, then Civ 4 is extensively using virtual memory which is what causes the system slowdown. Eventually the leak will cause all available memory to run out and the program crashes. I also found a direct correlation between map size and how soon the program freezes; larger maps appear to cause the freeze sooner. I found an optimal map size that seems to be stable, played for several hours and not one freeze. In the mean time, we have to wait for Firaxis to acknowledge the memory leak, then find it, and then to fix it.

If you do not see any hard drive activity while the program is slowing down, or you experience this on even small maps, its probably not caused by a memory leak.

Hope this sheds some light.

Don

 

[ReconSOC]

It's not a memory leak on my system. My RAM usage is pegged at 571Meg and never moves.

 

[Crimson Shadow]

@ReconSOC

Well then it is really strange. As I said I got the same screen corruption in FEAR demo. I will try full version when I get the chance.

But it boggles my mind what can be so 3D heavy in Civ 4 that causes such screen corruption.

As one pointed out it could be gfx memory that is causing problems (overheating) but how about that other games doesn't have these problems I have no problems in Doom 3, Half Life 2, GTA San Andreas, PES4&5.

If your warranty for GFX is still vaild than try to replace it.

 

[ReconSOC]

ya - same problem with autosaves turned off. I am beginning to think that there is simply a problem with FEAR and with Civ 4 and Nvidia cards. BF2 on high is extremely demanding yet it DOES NOT crash after hour of play. In fact, I dont' think it has ever crashed.

On a side note when I was talking to tech support I had the guy look at the picture you posted. He said "wow that's weird".

 

[fluff77]

I have the problem detailed in the first post of this thread: at a seemingly random moment, I get that clicking sound that the monitor or graphics card (I'm no expert, I don't know which) makes when a game goes from 2d to 3d, while the screen goes blank. I've found I can alt+tab out and back into the game and carry on playing, but this gets tiresome after a few times and I've given up bothering to play until there is a fix.

Tech support is as useful as a dead elephant.

FEAR has been mentioned, so I'll say that I played through the whole game with no problem. Quake 4 also.

Here is the contents of the error log:

[Oct 28, 2005 - 00:45:21] Messages while processing 'Resource/Themes/Civ4.thm'

Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4910, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4918, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4926, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4983, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4991, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4999, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'

Same as everyone elses.

My system:
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (first person in this thread with an ATI card?)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1gb RAM
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
Win XP Home

 

[godochaos]

Fluff, i'm at work, so i have not been able to explore resolving this further, but have you tried copying the file :Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga
into the directory mentioned in the error report?

I'm leaning towards this being an issue of directx getting corrupted. I can think of no other reason why my 3d heavy Planetside game no longer works now. (or an issue with Nvidia drivers, but I have tried many sets of new and old drivers and still see the issue)

 

[fluff77]

NoBull6 already detailed his attempts at this and other similar ideas on the first page of this thread, he had no luck.

 

[Driftwood]

I guess it's understandable that my solution didn't work for you guys. My screen never displayed multi-colored tiles when it froze. The game and computer simply became unresponsive. There was no corrpution of the graphics. I must have been having a different problem then you guys were (and still are).

For the record, I'm not using the most up to date video driver for my computer. These are my system specs and they're working fine.

Geforce 7800 GTX (forceware version 78.01)
Athlon 64 X2 4400+
1gb RAM
Creative SB X-Fi
Windows XP Pro

 

[mephistoex]

I'm running on laptop with mobility radeon 9700 and 128mb of it's own memory. Currently when I'm at the menu the game hangs and some sounds remain playing there, I might get some weird checker screens and bump back to desktop, without my gpu drivers running.

If I'm fast enough I can get the singleplayer running, but after a few seconds it just tilts. Last nigh I tried all the fixxes mentioned here and after the creation of new user in windows I could play the game with the user. The menu wouldn't tilt after waiting a longer while, so I though yay it's fixxed and started playing the Tutorial, finished the tutorial and wen't to sleep.

Now after waking up I can't play the game again even if I create yet again new users, it's still the same problem. I too get this to my ThemeParseLog.txt

[Oct 28, 2005 - 14:26:59] Messages while processing 'Resource/Themes/Civ4.thm'

Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4910, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4918, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4926, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4983, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4991, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4999, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'

Starting to get aggrevated, haven't tried any other games yet, but atleast before I installed this game Quake 4 worked, though I've already uninstalled it. Maybe I should try out some directx cleaner and make a reinstall, it's weird since I already had directx 9.0c or whatever that game with Quake 4, although I also had it before that.

 

[nho3]

Hey guys I have the same problem as most of you except my vcard simply stops outputting video and my monitor goes into standby and the game crashes. I to have a Geforce card. I have the FX 5900XT 256mb vram card. I was using the latest Nvidia drivers version 81.85 and the game would crash and my video card would be put into some sort of safe mode where Direct3D is disabled and the resolution is locked at 640x480. I tried installing an older version of the drivers and the game runs longer before crashing. My current Nvidia driver version is 78.01. The game does have a memmory leak but its minor. I dont think that is the cause of the crashing. In most cases when a game crashes with no error message or causes some odd graphics it is the video card causing the problem. It could be a memmory leak within the video though. Most memmory crashes produce errors though. Unfortuatly MS has made it real hard to remove DirectX. If u simply run the install program for version 9.0c it will not do anything if you already have a verion of DX that is equal or newer than 9.0c. I'm going to try using DirectX Eradicator and installing a fresh copy of 9.0c that did not come with Civ4. If that doesnt work I will try an older version of DirectX.

 

[godochaos]

nho let us know if that works.
I get exact same issue on my 5900. Monitor goes blank no signal. 1-5 min into any games w 3D heavy graphics.
Currently using forceware 81.85 i think

I'm in the process of trying to get "Happy" directX uninstall to work
I will try to uninstall directx, but so far no luck, may need to completely reinstall xp

I'm screwed right now, because no games that use 3D work any more LOL

 

[freezerburn26]

I get the same exact screen as crimson shadow. Happens randomly. Also only on civ 4. evga geforce 6800gt newest drivers no overclocking or anything.

 

[mephistoex]

Well, I copied the city_titlearrows.tga or whatever from the Civ4/Custom folder to --> Civ4/HUD, the errors that are reported to ThemeParseLog.txt seems to have disappeared.

Well anyways I still get a crash with the game, similar to the couple posts before with my gpu getting to standby mode or something. I noticed that on the Logs folder I've this other error log:

PythonErr2.log

sys.path = ['ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\email', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\encodings', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\build', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\py', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\tools', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib\\colourchooser', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib\\editor', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib\\floatcanvas', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib\\masked', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib\\mixins', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\lib\\ogl', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\py\\tests', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM\\wx\\tools\\XRCed', 'ASSETS\\PYTHON\\SYSTEM']

sys.modules = {'zipimport': <module 'zipimport' (built-in)>, 'signal': <module 'signal' (built-in)>, '__builtin__': <module '__builtin__' (built-in)>, 'sys': <module 'sys' (built-in)>, '__main__': <module '__main__' (built-in)>, 'exceptions': <module 'exceptions' (built-in)>, 'CvPythonExtensions': <module 'CvPythonExtensions' (built-in)>}

sys.builtin_module_names = ('CvPythonExtensions', '__builtin__', '__main__', '_bisect', '_codecs', '_codecs_cn', '_codecs_hk', '_codecs_iso2022', '_codecs_jp', '_codecs_kr', '_codecs_tw', '_csv', '_heapq', '_hotshot', '_locale', '_multibytecodec', '_random', '_sre', '_subprocess', '_symtable', '_weakref', '_winreg', 'array', 'audioop', 'binascii', 'cPickle', 'cStringIO', 'cmath', 'collections', 'datetime', 'errno', 'exceptions', 'gc', 'imageop', 'imp', 'itertools', 'marshal', 'math', 'md5', 'mmap', 'msvcrt', 'nt', 'operator', 'parser', 'regex', 'rgbimg', 'sha', 'signal', 'strop', 'struct', 'sys', 'thread', 'time', 'xxsubtype', 'zipimport')
load_module CvEventInterface
load_module CvUtil
load_module traceback
load_module CvEventManager
load_module CvScreensInterface
load_module CvMainInterface
load_module ScreenInput
load_module CvScreenEnums
load_module time
load_module CvDomesticAdvisor
load_module PyHelpers
load_module CvTechChooser
load_module CvForeignAdvisor
load_module math
load_module CvMilitaryAdvisor
load_module CvFinanceAdvisor
load_module CvReligionScreen
load_module CvCivicsScreen
load_module string
load_module CvVictoryScreen
load_module CvOptionsScreen
load_module CvReplayScreen
load_module CvHallOfFameScreen
load_module CvDanQuayle
load_module CvGameUtils
load_module CvUnVictoryScreen
load_module CvDawnOfMan
load_module CvTechSplashScreen
load_module CvTopCivs
load_module random
load_module CvInfoScreen
load_module CvIntroMovieScreen
load_module CvVictoryMovieScreen
load_module CvWonderMovieScreen
load_module CvEraMovieScreen
load_module CvPediaMain
load_module CvPediaScreen
load_module CvScreen
load_module CvPediaTech
load_module CvPediaUnit
load_module CvPediaBuilding
load_module CvPediaPromotion
load_module CvPediaUnitChart
load_module CvPediaBonus
load_module CvPediaTerrain
load_module CvPediaFeature
load_module CvPediaImprovement
load_module CvPediaCivic
load_module CvPediaCivilization
load_module CvPediaLeader
load_module CvPediaSpecialist
load_module CvPediaHistory
load_module CvPediaProject
load_module CvPediaReligion
load_module CvWorldBuilderScreen
load_module Popup
load_module CvWorldBuilderDiplomacyScreen
load_module CvDebugTools
load_module CvDebugInfoScreen
load_module CvMapGeneratorUtil
load_module CvGFCScreen
load_module CvPopupInterface
load_module CvScreenUtilsInterface
load_module CvScreenUtils
load_module CvWBPopups
load_module CvCameraControls
load_module CvAdvisorUtils
PY:OnInit
load_module CvAppInterface


I've no idea what that means (well some idea what it means), but it actually doesn't seem to give any errors on that log. Still I'd presume since it's named PythonErr2.log it's got something to do with python and is an error.

So I can get around 30 secs of playtime, if I manage to go to single player I can play until the 30 secs comes around. Though I get the same problem with just looking at earth. I was hoping to actually play this game this weekend :/

 

[mephistoex]

Hmm.. I seem to have gotten it to "work", so I wen't to follow the python problem and stumpled to these lines on _Civ4Config:

; Set to 1 for no python exception popups
HidePythonExceptions = 1

I changed this to 0..

; Set to 1 for no python exception popups
HidePythonExceptions = 0

I then started the game and right after the intro had some 2 line python error in 2 different files. I pressed ok and after that everything worked. I didn't manage to get the error again for screenshot, but it's working. Though on restart I yet again got the Render initialization error, though when I re-restarted it didn't make that and now it works.. weird eh..

Well I'm all happy now if it really works, though I can't see how that would have fixed it. Well, atleast until the next error I'm off to playing.

// Still seems to bump me back to desktop before menu comes, but I can just re-activate civilization 4 from taskbar and get back to the menu. Maybe the python error still is there, but it isn't popping up anymore.