Mobility Radeon 9600: a fix that actually worked

[beersnob]

I'd spent about a week scouring the Internet trying to get Civ4 to work on my IBM Thinkpad. I had tried the latest ATI drivers from IBM (which weren't all that new), the Unpak fix, the Omega drivers, etc., etc. Nothing worked. The most I'd get was a few turns into the game and then a hard reboot.

Finally. I saw a posting here that talked about a Mobility patch that allows you to download the latest and greatest ATI Catalyst drivers (not the Mobility, but the regular ones). This did the trick for me.
First, download the patch from:
http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/
Then, download and extract the latest Catalyst drivers from:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27
(that link is for XP)
Once the files have extracted to c:\ati\support\5-11_xp-2k_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_27345, you'll want to run the Pajje patch on that folder.
Then install the ATI drivers and they won't realize you have a Mobility chipset.

So far I've not had any adverse affects with either Civ or anything else on my laptop. <Fingers will remain crossed, just in case>.

Thanks to Firaxis for allowing us all to be the world's largest unpaid QA group! (sarcasm intended)

 

[ThePunisher]

Lucky you! Presumably you have the T42 M10 with ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 64MB?

Some of us have the slightly older M7 which only comes with a 32mb ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 with no T&L!

I'm hoping to upgrade my work M7 (<3 months old!) for a M10 in late Jan... Until then I play the game from orbit early then zoom down for white terrain later. Oh, well, at least it's kinda playable...

 

[Hephaistos]

also works for ATI mobility radeon 9000 by the way,
haven't had any further problems since!

 

[Blacksmith]

Didn't work for me, and I have a ATI mobility radeon 9000.

 

[Schlomoe99]

I've got the Mobility Radeon 9600, and I just used the latest from www.Omegadrivers.net
Worked like a charm!

 

[Blacksmith]

I installed msxml6 from the Microsoft site, then uninstalled and reinstalled my audio (yes, audio, not video), and since then, I'm not sleeping a lot at night, just playing away!!!