[NOT A BUG] 1.0.1.383 Crashing every few turns...solution: Corrupted drivers

[TPQ]

Hi,

Since I downloaded the Korea Civ I've had game crashes that were all but eliminated previously. I didn't bother to report it as there was no specific pattern and it was just a few crashes per game, so it wasn't too annoying.

However, since updating to the 1.0.1.383 patch (which didn't change a lot, did it?) Civ5 now crashes every few turns. I'm lucky if I can get 10 or 15 turns between crashes.

• If I load a savegame whilst a game is active, the loading screen starts and within 5 seconds the game crashes, every time, without fail.
  
• If I go back to main menu from an active game and load a save game, the loading screen starts and within 5 seconds the game crashes.
  
• If I select the right or left arrow in a city screen to go to another city's city screen, after the game has sent me to the original city for build orders, the game crashes.
  
• Every few turns (between 3-15 or so) after I hit "end turn", the game crashes.
  
• Every so often, when leaving a leader screen after making a deal, the game crashes.

I've checked my hardware. No instabilities. I've checked other games. No crashes. I've run registry cleaners. No issues. I've tried the Steam game cache verification. Steam says one file failed to verify, then downloads it, then downloads it, then downloads it, then downloads it, but never seems to ever be able to verify this one file, or fix the game...

I don't mind Civ5 crashing occasionally (like 2 or 3 times over a 5 hour session) but I'm now seeing crashes every few turns and it's really starting to annoy the heck out of me.

I can forgive Civ5 for many things, but having bought the game on release and now bought all the DLC civs, I think it's fair enough to expect the game to damn well work, especially after all the months of waiting for it to be patched up and have the gamplay fixed.

Somebody please help me. This is driving me nuts .

 

[TPQ]

OK, as nobody seems to have any advice, I tried some stuff myself.

First I tried renaming the Steam "ClientRegistry.blob" as "ClientRegistryOLD.blob" and having Steam re-create it. This did not stop Civ5 crashing, or stop Steam failing to validate the mystery file it never validates.

Second I uninstalled Civ5, manually deleted all reference to it on my PC, ran several reg cleaners to eliminate any remaining registry entries relating to it and then re-installed Civ5 from DVD and let Steam apply all the patches and DLC.

The second fix I attempted resulted in the game crashing on the very first attempt to start a new game. Civ5 crashed during the voice-over actor's monologue about the Civ and Leader I'd chosen...

WTF is wrong with this game!? I can't even play it now. It's like the devs are punishing me for buying DLC or something...

Come on people, help me out here, this is really frustrating .

 

[glider1]

Wish I could help realise it is frustrating. I see that you are on XP SP3? Maybe that's it? Understand that it worked before the DLC. I'd say something else has happened to your system that is not actually related to the DLC. Only thinking out loud.
Cheers

 

[TPQ]

Wish I could help realise it is frustrating. I see that you are on XP SP3? Maybe that's it? Understand that it worked before the DLC. I'd say something else has happened to your system that is not actually related to the DLC. Only thinking out loud.
Cheers

Thanks for the reply .

Apart from the first crash after re-installation, the game seems less crashy now. I got through ~100 turns OK.

Having said that, the game did crash when I tired to take screenshots of red and white checkerboarding I'm now getting. I don't know why.

I took some shots with my phone. I don't know what the heck is wrong. Before the re-install the game crashed every few turns, now it doesn't crash anywhere near as much, but I get checkerboarding which makes citizen allocation difficult.

Please, please, somebody help. I need my Civ fix and these issues are ruining the game.

 

[The_J]

That now again looks like something is wrong with your graphics card.
The red & white checkerboards are known to appear with some less powerful cards, but since it did not happen before...hhmm...do you have any problems with other games?

 

[TPQ]

That now again looks like something is wrong with your graphics card.
The red & white checkerboards are known to appear with some less powerful cards, but since it did not happen before...hhmm...do you have any problems with other games?

Thanks for the reply.

I ran Civ5 perfectly on my old ATi 4850 512MB with no checkerboarding. My current card is approximately 2x as powerful as my old card according to synthetic benchmarks, plus it has twice the VRAM, so it should be fine. In addition, Civ5 ran fine with my new card when I got it. The issues with crashing and checkerboarding only occurred after patch 383; all was fine before.

No issues with any other games at all.

I'll trying turning the graphics settings down, but my old card ran Civ5 with everything maxed without all the crashes and checkerboards.

 

[glider1]

When you say that it happened after the patch, an unfortunate set of cause and effect might have happened and it's happened to me. We think that the patch did it, but it was merely a coincidence of some other cause.

Civ5 really works everything in the system very hard as hard as a flight simulator! It's an unfortunate situation for a turned based game, but unavoidable due to the immense computational requirements. That is the other issue....

Suggest that you think about running some kind of comprehensive test on your graphics card to see whether heating effects are causing a hardware fail. The other angle is that you are still running XP, but your latest card is probably begging for windows 7.

Another angle is to put your old graphics card back in and see what happens.

Cheers

 

[TPQ]

When you say that it happened after the patch, an unfortunate set of cause and effect might have happened and it's happened to me. We think that the patch did it, but it was merely a coincidence of some other cause.

Civ5 really works everything in the system very hard as hard as a flight simulator! It's an unfortunate situation for a turned based game, but unavoidable due to the immense computational requirements. That is the other issue....

Suggest that you think about running some kind of comprehensive test on your graphics card to see whether heating effects are causing a hardware fail. The other angle is that you are still running XP, but your latest card is probably begging for windows 7.

Another angle is to put your old graphics card back in and see what happens.

Cheers

Thanks for the reply.

My system could handle everything before I bought Korea and the got the 383 patch. It's only after these events that the problems occurred, starting with the occasional crash after Korea and then lots of crashes and graphical issues after the patch. It's odd, because I thought 383 barely changed anything.

I'm probably going to move to Windows 7 soon anyway, so that'll mean a complete re-install of everything and DX10/11, so that might help.

In the mean time I will try running some more stability testing programs and see what happens. I ran OCCT for a while on my CPU and RAM, but I can try testing my RAM with memtest86, my CPU overclock with Intel Burn Test and my graphics card with FurMark. I'll try running OCCT and FurMark together to stress all components.

The reason I don't suspect it's a hardware problem specifically, is because everything runs perfectly other than Civ5, which used to run perfectly, then started to not run perfectly, but as you say, Civ5 is pretty resource hungry, so it's worth checking hardware, if for no other reason than to completely eliminate it as the cause of the problem.

As it's graphics that seem to be most messed up, I think I'll uninstall and re-install my graphics drivers too, as they may be bugged. I might try some Omega Drivers as well.

I'll report back.

 

[TPQ]

OK. I uninstalled my graphics drivers, ran three reg cleaning programs, did a clean install of the same graphics drivers and now there appear to be no problems.

All I can guess is that there was some kind of driver corruption and that the patch had nothing to do with it and it was simply coincidence that it occurred when the patch arrived.

My apologies to the Civ5 devs! Looks like this wasn't Civ5's fault at all!

 

[glider1]

Well done. Civ5 is really stable as far as I can tell. Fingers crossed that the drivers didn't get corrupted because of some other issue with the computer. If it plays ok for a few days, that will be enough evidence. From what I hear, windows7 is a genuine successor of XP and you couldn't go wrong upgrading to it. Just need to ensure that your system is stable, otherwise the huge amount of working doing the upgrade will not achieve anything.

Man that is some system you have got there. Your machine would run a flight simulator like FSX with ease. If you do go windows7, suggest upgrading to the 64bit version NOT the 32bit version, just in case you want to add more RAM later on to play the really huge CIV maps. Even with 4GB the huge maps should work ok.

Cheers

 

[Cyrinno]

DirectX 11 can push graphics cards harder then DirectX9 first try DirectX9 mode and see if you are crashing.

I also recently updated drivers and started getting crashes when graphics card was getting pushed too hard in DX11 mode.

Solution was to underclock slightly(safest) or increase voltage slightly(very dangerous).

Both of these solutions worked for me along with DX9 mode (as it pushes graphics card less)