Mouse icon freezes up

[fjorner]

Anyone else getting this problem?

In addition to the choppy music on the intro movie and wonder movies, (another thread), I have an intermittent problem where the mouse icon freezes. In the background, I can still apparently move the mouse around. The computer isn't frozen, the keyboard still works and music still plays, but its as if my mouse is invisible, and the on-screen mouse icon doesn't follow my mouse movements. I can click to the options, exit to desktop... and back in windows, same thing! My mouse is frozen on the screen, but I can click around. The only thing I've found solve this problem is to turn OFF the computer (restarting doesn't work either!). I've tried both a USB and PS/2 mouse with no luck. I did get a backasswards fix to this problem by turning mouse trails on. The trails show up and I can now see the mouse even when the icon dissappears in Civ4, although it looks bad because the icon blinks around the screen. Anyone else get this?

This problem started on my stable system after I installed Civ4... and within the first hour of playing Civ4. I am positive it is related to Civ4.

 

[WHLNH]

Yup, I have the exact same thing. Problem is sometimes (rarely) it works! At one point I played on and off for over 12 hours both saving and loading games and switching scenarios. Just as suddently as it worked, it then stopped working. Almost always it freezes by the start of the game, but can also freeze while loading.

Others, but not many, have also identifed this problem. Alas, no solution has been identified. I find it interesting how when we exit to desktop the mouse no longer works there either, so it requires a hard boot. I'm sure that fact alone would be a pointer to someone at Take2 for a possible solution.

In any case, I've been trying since day one to get around this mouse problem, it is the only problem I have, but have not been successful. Please post a solution if you find one! I am desperate, but also disappointed in Firaxis. Up until now Firaxis and Sid's name always stood for quality, that aint the case anymore. Though some will try to push the blame to Take2, it is the Firaxis name and Sid's that is on the box, so they are the ones to hold accountable.

Bill

Bill

 

[Paccali]

I have this exact problem. I made a thread a couple days ago, but what with the ATI problems and the leader-head problems, it just gets pushed back. The tech-support people don't have a solution yet, but I have to call them back tomorrow because they said they were looking into it. It is very irritating to have to reboot my computer after the cursor freezes.

I absolutely need to fix this. When the cursor doesn't freeze, the game is so great. Its such a hassle having to use trails or the CTRL to ping the mouse thing over and over again. I hope they patch soon. The techie told me that they are planning an emergency patch soon, which is silly that its not out yet. Blizzard was all over this stuff when WoW came out.

 

[atefec]

The techie told me that they are planning an emergency patch soon, which is silly that its not out yet.

I think these are good news. At some games you have to wait for several weeks until a patch is developed and tested that tries to fix all the bugs on the whole.

I've got the same problem with the freezing mouse pointer at my german version. I still can use the mouse, but the icon is fixed to one point so you can't see the current position of the mouse. On Saturday I played nearly 4 hours with no problems at all. On Friday and Sunday the pointer got frozen every 10 minutes, sometimes it already sticks after loading a savegame. That’s really annoying and I hope that the patch is released soon.

In a german civ forum it was suggested to downgrade the nvidia driver to version 77.72 or to 71.84 and it was told that this fixed the problem with the mouse pointer. On the other hand these players reported that using the older driver made some of the resources near the cities being displayed in black. That's why I didn't try that.

I experimented with different mice and different mouse drivers yesterday, but no success.

 

[WHLNH]

I too have tried two different mice (mouses?). Both were Microsoft, but one was cabled-in and the other was infra-red. Made no difference.

I also was initially using the older drivers and then upgraded to the most recent NVidea GEForce driver, made no difference.

Hmm, I'll have to try the "trail", I did turn on the CTRL option in the mouse, but it didn't seem to work, maybe the trail will at least let me play!

Bill

 

[fjorner]

Yeah, I think we can safely say that this problem is not related to hardware of the mouse. Obviously Civ4 is messing something up with the system, thus the locking of the mouse icon in the OS too. So it may be OS/hardware involved. What are you guys running?

Windows XP Home SP1
Celeron 2.4ghz - Compaq presario s4000nx
geforce4 mx
onboard AC'97 audio

 

[Metzen]

Anyone else getting this problem?

In addition to the choppy music on the intro movie and wonder movies, (another thread), I have an intermittent problem where the mouse icon freezes.

I was having similar issues. At first, I assumed that it was the video card/driver, but after installing the latest drivers I was still having the same problem. I saw another thread that suggested turning off audio hardware acceleration and figured it was worth a shot. That seems to have fixed the problem, although I haven't logged a lot of hours since getting it working.

Windows XP Professional SP2
nVidia ti 4600 w/ 128 MB
P4 2.x
> 256 MB RAM
SB Live! (now with hardware acceleration disabled through dxdiag)
Everything in dxdiag tests as "ok"

Good luck!

 

[dog77_1999]

I had this same problem. According to the Take 2 guys, it was my intergrated sound driver. Apparently the drivers weren't up to date so it was messing with my normal processing. Try updating your sound drivers and see if that works.

 

[WHLNH]

I already did upgrade my soundcard drivers, as I was initially certain that was where the problem was. I still think that is where the problem is, it is an integrated sound card, but the problem is not in the drivers, it is in the CIV code as it isn't working with the last two versions of drivers.

Bill

 

[fjorner]

I had this same problem. According to the Take 2 guys, it was my intergrated sound driver. Apparently the drivers weren't up to date so it was messing with my normal processing. Try updating your sound drivers and see if that works.

Hm... interesting. I have onboard sound too. I'll check that driver...

 

[Paccali]

I have an onboard and a PCI sound card. I might have forgotten to disable the onboard one, I'll have to check. Maybe thats the problem, which would be weird considering nothing is plugged into it. The Audigy sound card is updated and working fine.

I still doubt this has too much to do with it, since every other application has no problems like this. This is bad coding on their part.

 

[WHLNH]

OK, I can't promise this will work for you, heck I can't even promise it will work for me tomorrow (!) but today I got the game to run. Played for about 4 hours, but actually started the game and let it sit on my PC open for an additional 10 hours. Everything worked perfectly. Will it work tomorrow, who knows, but it worked today.

I went to my control panel and accessed the mouse control (pointer options). I set the mouse to be visible with CTRL and, and I think more importantly, to "display opinter trails" (display, hide, and show boxes checked, others blank). Takes a little getting used to, but not much. Actually got to enjoy the game. Try it, it can't hurt! Good Luck (to me too)

Bill

 

[atefec]

The option "display pointer trails" works good for me. Even if the mouse pointer freezes, I still can play on because the trails are visible. That's good enough until a patch should fix the problem.

 

[BlueEyedDrifter]

I have the same problem. It started after I updated my drivers. This morning I had to restart my comp 4 times before the cursor started working right. I hope this gets fixed soon. It's not only interrupting valuable Civ time, but it affects my system in general!

 

[atefec]

I have the same problem. It started after I updated my drivers. This morning I had to restart my comp 4 times before the cursor started working right.

Did you try "display pointer trails" in control panel? Otherwise you could try to downgrade your driver, but expect to get graphic problems.

 

[navmatt]

Something that seems to have worked for me is to revert to the previous nVidia drivers. I was running the latest (81.85), switching to the 78.01 drivers seems to have stopped this problem.

 

[BlueEyedDrifter]

yeah...I already fixed it. I made a thread the other day of how I fixed it. I turns out that Nvidia was having me download the wrong driver. Just found the right one and its good as new!