PC Crashes during GOTM

P

prologos

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 13, 2005
Messages
9
As you have guessed my PC crashed while i was playing GOTM-11... What should I do now to be my results valid? Reload from my previous save game or my previous autosave? Or Am I scrued for good?
And I was in on one of the best wars in my history CIV :( Please if any of the mods know what to do answer quickly as it is weekend and an awful lot of time to waste :)
TIA prologos

to be honest the game crashed twice and both time i listned to custom music through the options menu..maybe that has something to do about it?
 
prologos said:
What should I do now to be my results valid? Reload from my previous save game or my previous autosave?
Click to expand...

Reload from the latest save available (does not matter if it is autosave or a manual one) and try to play the game in the way you did before your crash (including unfavourable decisions and mistakes).

prologos said:
Please if any of the mods know what to do answer quickly as it is weekend and an awful lot of time to waste
Click to expand...

I am not an admin here but I'm pretty sure they would say the same. At least they always did before (you are not the first GOTM-player who has its game crashed :p ).
 
can a mod edit the first post though...I hadn't started the GOTM yet so didn't realize the leaders...don't want others to see that as well
 
g0g4zZ@c!v said:
Reload from the latest save available (does not matter if it is autosave or a manual one) and try to play the game in the way you did before your crash (including unfavourable decisions and mistakes).
Click to expand...
Yes - this is the correct method. You should play the turns in exactly the same manner - including the 'bad' moves.


I suggest that if you get frequent crash problems, then you set your autosaves to happen every turn.
 
I had a series of hangs today (almost one every 10 turns after 1950) and the crash analysis said it was the video driver:

"Cause: A video adapter device driver

Symptoms:

A message appears on a blue screen with error code information:

STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
- or -
STOP: 0x100000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M"

Suggested solutions were 1) Update driver; or 2) Manually decrease hardware acceleration.

computer is an HP notebook dv6000, video is nVidia GeForce Go 7200

Did not find any new drivers to install at MS update or nVidia site (site was vague as to whether an update there that referred to 7800 and 7900 also was appropriate for 7200).

Didn't know if hardware acceleration reduction (MS crash analysis says set to none) would interfere with the game.

The odd thing is that this did not occur in GOTM 10, or in 11 until year 1950. Had large numbers of units in 11 at the end, more than ever in a civ game of mine. Is it just overload?

I had read in other posts that reloading the latest save is OK (and after the second or third crash, I started saving twice a turn), which is what I did and submitted. By the time crashes started, the outcome was not in doubt (just a matter of getting enough units overland fast enought to get to 64% land before 2050). Nothing was meaningfully different in the restarts compared to the original play.

But JericoHill posted the following:

"However, since a computer problem caused me to replay a critical series of turns (and these turns were much better the 2nd time through, despite my manuveuring the same way), my game is not submitable."

This makes me want to double check the legitimacy of my submission with the moderators. And any help on dealing with the video issue would be a bonus.

dV
 
Please do the following:

Click "start" and choose the "run" option.
In the box that appears, type "dxdiag" (without the quotation marks) and hit enter. This will start the directX diagnostic.
On the program that appears, hit the "save all information" button. It will output the data to a text file.
Post that text file here. :)
 
Hi ainwood,

Sending these as file attachments: the output box from the system tab, and also from the display tab.

Also, HP website has a diagnostic scanner, in its test of video system, it said that it could not write text to the video memory (or something like that). Does that make any sense (it doesn't to me).

dV
 

Attachments

OK, the attachment system would not let me attach both text files a once, so here is the other one.

Or not, as i am getting this message:

DxDiag System 2006 10 15.txt:
You have already attached this file in thread : PC Crashes during GOTM

Unless it combined both into one file, I am not seeing it in the post.

dV

Edit: Never mind. I thought it just saved the screen info, so I would need a file for each screen. But I now see it saved all screens, so the two files are identical.

Very clever of your attachment manager to know that despite the two different filenames! ;)

dV
 
OK - the key bit is that you have win XP for your geForce 7200.

The drivers you want are here.

Try that, and see if it helps. :)

Alternatively, there are a lot of threads on video problems in the Civ4 Technical Support forum, so search in there. I found one case where new drivers fixed it.
 
@ ainwood,

Thanks for the response.

The page you list with the drivers is the one I found that seemed unclear: it talks about that driver being for 7800 and 7900 series, but says nothing about being compatible (or not) with 7200.

So are you sure that this driver is OK for the 7200? If any doubt, I'll just send a question to the nVidia folks to be sure.

dV

Edit: Even more confusing, the nVidia site says:

"Drivers up to date?

Many times, if the issue has to do with NVIDIA’s GPU, you can usually solve them by making sure your drivers are up-to-date. Download the latest driver here.

However, if you have a notebook computer, you must typically get driver updates directly from the manufacturer of your notebook. Notebook graphics cards are highly specialized and the reference drivers provided on the www.nvidia.com website may not work unless indicated."

The "here" takes me to a page where if I choose the GeForce Go, I get to the page you suggested. But I thought Go series was for notebooks (which mine is, an HP), so paragraph 2 of the quote seems to contradict being sent to a download page at nVidia. They also say to remove the old driver before installing the new one (and to turn off antivirus), so if that is necessary I sure want to be sure I have the right new one.

Maybe this belongs in the tech support area.

dV
 
Ah - sorry, yes - I see your point! I read a couple of websites that suggested that the standard drivers will support the 7200, but I think you're right in that you should check with nVidia.

I found that the HP download page does have video drivers, if you select what your notebook actually is.

http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Nav?..._client=S-A-R163-1&h_page=hpcom&lang=en&cc=us

Not sure if they will be up-to-date latest drivers or not though.
 
I believe the driver is for all 7000 series'. nVidia seems to like having a single driver for every chip in a x000 series.

and if you install it and it ISN'T for the video card you have, then you can always rollback the driver using either the system device manager, or the system restore utility
 
I have downloaded, but not installed, this from the nVidia site:

ForceWare Release 80
Version: 84.63
Release Date: July 5, 2006
WHQL Certified

it is File Size: 46.2 MB

This is the one that says its for 7800 and 7900 with no reference to 7200. Also lists supported manufacturers, and HP is not on the list. Would the restore options undo the uninstall?

Site says:

"Please make sure to read the Driver Installation Hints Document before you install this driver."

Which are:

"Driver Installation Hints

Download Accelerator utilities should be disabled when downloading any drivers.

Do not run virus protection software in the background while installing the drivers. This prevents the driver from configuring itself properly.

Before installing new drivers make sure you uninstall all NVIDIA display drivers from the Windows Control Panel. Browse to the Start Menu > Windows Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs and search for "NVIDIA Windows Display Drivers" or "NVIDIA Display Drivers" and select remove."

HP site has (for my HP Pavillion dv6045nr):

Driver - Chipset Date Version Previous Size

» NVIDIA nForce Chipset Driver and Network Controller

08-2006 8.62 A - 9.75M

Driver - Display Date Version Previous Size

» Yuan EC680 Analog TV Tuner Driver

04-2006 2.275.0.41 Version: 1.67M

Driver - Graphics Date Version Previous Size

» NVIDIA GeForce Series Video Driver

08-2006 8.6.0.2 A Version: 29.28M (note the smaller file size)

I assume that the Graphics one is the driver in question, but maybe I should update all three of these? HP does not suggest uninstalling the existing drivers.

Seems like updating at HP site first is the way to go, and if that does not solve, then ask some questions at both places.

On the idea of uninstalling the old driver, how would I get a display between the uninstall and the new install? Is there some default driver in windows to get basic functionality?

dV
 
My opinion (for what its worth!) is that you shouldn't need to replace all three drivers, although it wouldn't hurt.

I do suggest that you uninstall the current driver before installing the new one.

If you install a new driver and its the "wrong" one, then I would expect that what would happen is that you will get flaky video performance, or absolute worst, your video card wouldn't be detected, and you'd be stuck with basic graphics - you could still go into 'safe mode' and reinstall the drivers. If you are feeling unltra-cautious, you might want to make a boot disk so that you can boot from a CD (probably not necessary).

I would try the drivers from the HP site first.
 
Thanks to all for advice given in this thread.

Did have the same "thread stuck in device driver" problem once since at some ridiculously low turn point of a game before doing any driver changes, so its not just an issue of the huge size of GOTM 11.

I installed the video driver from the HP site. It did not ask me to unistall, but it may have done that automatically as the screen went to some really low resolution during the install and until I rebooted.

Still froze up once in the late (1950 ish) part of a subsequent game, so seems not a perfect fix. Still, as a believer in leaving well enough alone, I think I'll leave it at that unless it arises more often. I'll can live with one or two freezes over the course of a whole game, rather than risk a lot of manual unistalls and reinstalls that could really screw me up. After all, it performs just fine for all other tasks.

dV
 
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