My 1st game crash - details posted. Help?

[Dutch Canuck]

Input from ya'll experts most welcome!

I play vanilla and warlord Civ4 with full graphics features, because everything has worked in the first vanilla games I played with maps smaller than standard. (And no big problems with Warlords - yet.)

Today I was playing a standard sized vanilla civ game (to wrap-up an old game I enjoyed but did not finish before I got Warlords) and in the mid-Industrial age I zoomed to global view and my game instantly crashed and the monitor display went "primitive": 600x800 and 8 bit colour! That really looked weird even though the OS, input and file system still responded properly. I got the following pop-up box:

"Failed to allocate video memory. Please try reducing your graphics settings.
File:\Source\Main\Civilization4\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\CoreLibs\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line:1019"

And another pop-up followed that said Windows had to interrupt the game .exe file and shut it down (a runtime failure? - not clear)

Could not manually adjust display. I rebooted my system and the display looks okay again. I haven't restarted vanilla Civ yet because I want responses to this post first. Did the dxdiag check... dxdiag analysis detected no display problems!

By the way: my display went primitive once before about a week ago after a normal shutdown of this vanilla game. Also, it has happened that this vanilla game stalls a few seconds when scrolling around the map after a new turn begins with a good fraction of the detailed graphics disappearing. It got worse with time; and now today I got this crash.

So, many questions:

What does this all mean?
What is going on?
Do I need a driver update? (I haven't found one yet specifically for the NVidia 7300 GS)
What's with the "\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line:1019" message?
Is this the memory leak issue? MAF?
Should I expect less problems with Warlords games or is this a new localized problem on my machine that I have to tend to?
Is there a game cache that should be emptied? (The cache had only 1.03MB of files in it - not much!)

Please note: I have played and finished a standard terra map game in Warlords (got a Space Victory with Catherine) with very few problems about 2 months ago - other than some minor graphic stuttering, and the need to close and reload the game in order to play the victory movie properly...

I never had this video+game crash problem before!

Thank you in advance for answers! I am reasonably competent at IT stuff, so detailed answers don't frighten me if someone has interesting info to share.

I have reviewed the Fix-It List sticky and searched posts, didn't see anything exactly the same, but certainly some similar tales of woe... I hope the "Line:1019" quote I posted above helps to zero-in on the problem?

My System --------- [main stats from dxdiag] ---------------------------------------------------------

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 6/3/2007, 12:45:06
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Prosys
System Model: Axess
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.93GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 253MB used, 2204MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 2: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.

-------
Display
-------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 7300 GS
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_01DF&SUBSYS_1FE219F1&REV_A1
Display Memory: 512.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX922
Monitor Max Res: 1280,1024
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.8426 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 5/18/2006 10:56:13, 3975040 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: nv4_mini.sys
Mini VDD Date: 5/18/2006 10:56:14, 3655712 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-429F-11CF-AB5A-E83F00C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x01DF
SubSys ID: 0x1FE219F1
Revision ID: 0x00A1
Revision ID: 0x00A1
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_B ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D ModeWMV9_B ModeWMV9_A

 

[GVBN]

What does this all mean?
What is going on?
Do I need a driver update? (I haven't found one yet specifically for the NVidia 7300 GS)
What's with the "\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line:1019" message?
Is this the memory leak issue? MAF?

Not a memory leak issue. DirectX 9 just fails to render game graphics. It's most likely a video card driver problem since your Windows also went into standard vga mode

Here's the latest driver for 7300 gs
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_94.24.html

 

[Dutch Canuck]

Thank you, I will try the driver update and report my results.

So 8 bit colour in 600 x 800 is "standard vga mode"? I wasn't aware of that definition; my IT knowledge is weak in graphics...

But I still have questions:
1) Why the crash with my vanilla civ4 game and not with the warlords game on a bigger map of 2 months ago?
2) Do video drivers just spontaneously start behaving badly? (That does not make much sense to me. Something must happened to the driver's logic somehow...)

I'll stay tuned

 

[Red Door]

I'm getting this same crash, except replace "File:\Source\Main\Civilization4\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\C oreLibs\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line:1019" with "File:\Source\Main\Civilization4\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\C oreLibs\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line:170"

My Card is a:

(Multiple Monitors) on All-in-Wonder 9000 Profile.

And yes, I have run Civilization IV and Warlords well in the past, but I recently re-installed both games.

 

[Red Door]

ADDED ON: I downloaded video card updates and etc. for my card, nothing happened, I get the same error.

 

[Dark_Elf]

I'm crashing a lot too. I can't figure it out either. Nothing seems to be wrong with my computer other than playing this damn game. Such a shame because if it worked correctly, I would play and easily give them more money for futures. I can't believe people will spend money on the new expansion, when they game screws up so much. They clearly didn't give a damn for consumers playing with nvidia graphics cards.