Lockups and Audigy 2's?

[botski]

I am getting quite a few lockups playing Civ4 that require me to hold the power switch for 5 seconds to power down. The OS is frozen solid - even a CTRL ALT DEL won't work.

Unfortunately for me, I updated my Audigy 2 drivers AND installed Civ 4 nearly at the same time, so I dont know if the problem is the soundcard or the game. I *COULD* play another game, yah, but I am sadly under control by this gaming crack .

Are any users of Turtle Beach or M-Audio sound cards having lockup issues?

 

[gunnergoz]

My Audigy 2 doesn't cause this sort of problem. Are you sure it isn't another resource, like video or a conflict with anti virus or anti spam s/w?

 

[botski]

Are you sure it isn't another resource, like video or a conflict with anti virus or anti spam s/w?

I just loaded the latest ATI drivers a few weeks ago and have had no problem with them on other games, nor have I had problems with Norton and other games.

Before I bought Civ4 I was having problems getting Creative's "Speaker Calibration" program to run, so I attemted to reinstall my audio drivers and the apps associated with them. It has been a frickin nightmare, to say the least, having to manually uninstall Creative apps because they dont show up in Add/Remove programs, having to hack the registry to remove those huge strings that get associated with a program (lilke {91B323B5 - A79C - 4D23 - BD6D - 046C565F9BCF}), fighting Creative's software which will reply with a "Cant find a Creative product on your machine" type error message half the time.....

Anyway, after doing some system restores in XP, I am able to hear sound just fine, and can listen to CD's forever. But then I installed Civ4. All was fine at the beginning of the game, but as the size of the map got larger, the lockups happened more frequently.

So I have two variables - a potentially screwed up sound driver, or a game that locks up when the map gets busy.

 

[Nemo]

I have Audigy 2 and have used two different drivers with Civ4. Both worked without a hitch. I vote for a Windows<->Driver issue on your box...especially given the info you just layed out.

 

[gunnergoz]

One more question...does your motherboard by chance have a sound chip on it already? Boards that do can cause conflicts if that chip is not turned off at the bios level. Just a thought.

 

[botski]

I dont have an onboard sound chip. Last night after a few hours of registry hacking, I was able to get the Audigy Drivers to install ok, and was able to install the other Creative Apps I need (speaker setting, calibration, etc).

Will try Civ 4 tonight to see if the lockups stop.

 

[ranger999]

I got hard lockups occasionally with the original Audigy + the beta unified 9-05 driver for Win XP for the entire AUdigy line. I reinstalled the 2004 driver and didn't have problems after that.

 

[NerdBird]

I would second ranger999's post. The beta Audigy drivers (Audigy 2) caused my system to be less stable all around; not just in Civ 4.