ntvdm.exe crash on XP

[victor manuel]

Hi there. I'm the new kid in town here. I installed Civ2 on Xp and it works quite ok for a while. Then it suddenly crashes and I get a msg saying "ntvd,exe is not responding" I have activated the Windows 95 compatibility box but it does not make any difference. Any ideas? Please bear in mind that my computer literacy does not go very far from "Ctrl+Alt+Del"
Thank's a lot and congratulations for the site

 

[ElephantU]

NTVDM is the part of Windows that runs 16 bit code (which Civ2 Classic and FW? are) in a 32 bit environment. VDM is Virtual DOS Machine. For it to give that kind of message your Civ2 session has gotten corrupted. I have run Civ2 Classic under XP for a couple years now without seeing an error like that, so it is not a problem in the base programs. Did this happen the first time you ran it? Were you playing a user-created scenario? Did you have any other DOS or 16-bit (older Windows) programs running at the same time that may have crashed or corrupted? Is your machine older, and have you seen any problems with memory or hard disk errors?

 

[victor manuel]

yes; it has happened on my first attempt and no, I was starting a new game from scratch. As far as I know, the only programs running at the same time were the antivirus and the internal processes. My machine is a Pentium IV at 3,2Ghz 1Giga RAM four months old and so far I have not encountered any problems with memory or Hard disks...

 

[ElephantU]

You're not running the 64bit version of Windows?

 

[victor manuel]

I dont' know. How can I check that?

 

[ElephantU]

If you don't know, you're probably not. I'll look around for some commentary on NTVDM, but it sounds like a more intermittent thing. Save often is the basic defense there (do you know how to set auto-saves?). Which version of Civ2 are you running?

 

[victor manuel]

I couldn't find which version it is. I bought it in London in 97, and in the properties tab it says the file was created on March 1996. I have the autosave feature correctly configured so I can recover all movements since the last turn's end, but it is still a pain in the neck!