My game has started to freeze up *ALL* the time

[Kolyana]

SO I've been playing since the release without a CTD ... lots of bugs, but no showstoppers.

Since the beginning my game has occassionally had a tendency to minimize itself to the desktop, but I could typically maximize it back open again and continue playing without a problem.

A few days ago I got my first and only CTD.

Today the whole thing is locking up on me ... my hardrive will click once, and within 5 seconds everything is frozen instantly.

Civ IV is not creating a log file, the system (Win XP) isn't creating anything untoward in the administrative logs.

The last three times I've tried to play, all three instances have done the same within half an hour (max) ... I literally can't play anymore.

I've defragged and *no* other games or applications are doing this (including F.E.A.R and Doom III .. both of which, I'm sure you'll agree, are pretty darn intensive games!).

My system seems perfectly stable except now with Civ IV running ... this is the only time I'm experiencing a problem.

I'm running a gig of high quality memory and a GE Force 6800 GT, with 7 internal case fans, 550 Watt PSU and nothing is overclocked .... I can't figure out why it's suddenly doing this.

I'm going to try uninstalling and reinstalling, but has anyone else had anything like this and anyone got any advice?

 

[TonyP]

I have the exact same problem, I can play for about 20-30 minutes before it locks up completely, and I haven't overclocked anything.

Im using a Athlon64 3400+, 1024Mb RAM and XFX Geforce 6600GT.

 

[Martin.Thee@faa]

I'm very disapointed in civ4. It seemed enjoyable until it hung on my first game just when it was getting interesting. Loaded the patch, and played another 4 hours of fun which led to frustration when it hung again. Now, I can't get it to load my saved game. I also cannot start a new game accepting all the defaults and random choices. How do I get my money back from this poorly designed piece of software??

I see others have had the same problem, but see no response from the software vendors. It seems that once you have my money, you don't care anymore.

A friend recommende this game to me and I am not happy!

 

[Arizona_Steve]

My game frequently freezes for five seconds or so, before (apparently) the video card resets itself and everthing continues normally. Not sure if this is related to the freezes reported above.

I run an Athlon64 3500+, 1GB and a 6800 Ultra.

 

[gunnergoz]

Have you tried clearing the game cache before re-launching the application? You also haven't mentioned your graphics and sound settings. Have you tried setting them lower? Another thing you can try is to bring up Windows Task Manager and re-set the game priority to normal from below normal where it usually is.

 

[TonyP]

I fixed it!

I set the graphics settings to medium, set SyncInput = 1, defragged the harddrive, increased the page file size.

and now it doesn't lock up anymore

 

[oldbear38]

I can open the game fine, plays , usually for up to 1500 A.D, then freezes. Solid. One time in 4 it freezes about half way thru loading. Always freezes if I try and use the ingameworld builder. This is with patch, 1 gig of RAM and a P4 3200. Other than stripping the machine and redoing the XP and everything else, I've tried it all. I'm using a year old Gateway 710 S. Anyone else?

 

[vitriolique]

The game was not very stable before patching it, but at least I could play a hour or more before rebooting. Since I've installed the patch, the game crashes repeatedly and I cannot continue my saved game. A shame, as it was getting interesting.

I will start a few new games to see how it behaves.

My machine is a bit short of the recommended requirements and all gfx were set at low.

 

[Harkonnen]

Try this. Though, it's memory-usage-targeted patch, it still might be the reason of CTDs, especially in late game.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146309