Problems Saving

[mokey]

hi, im new to civ3 and am experiencing some probs. first i kept crashing so i downloaded the 1.29fb2 updater. it worked fine for a couple days then started crashing again. now i have a new problem thats more important to fix... my games arent saving. they use to, and then sporadically they stopped, and after reinstalling the program 2x and running techtool and disk doctor it still isnt working right. the thing is while im playing the game and save i see all my saves there. then the game crashes and i think "well i only lost the last 1/2 hr, or at least to the last auto save... and when i check theres nothing there. i made sure i was saving in the right folder as this has happened before.

what do i do oh mac guru's???

 

[mokey]

im on a b/w power mac g3 with 300mhz processor, 640 mb built in mem, running civ3 game of the year edition 1.21g upgraded to 1.29fb2.

also the civ3 preference file keeps getting messed up... whether its a new game straight from install or ive trashed the pref file and when i start a new game and all it still registers as a bad pref file.

is there something i ccan do to fix this problem??

 

[AlanH]

What OS are you running?

There's no way it should be trashing previously saved files, if that's really happening, and they are not just becoming invisible. I suspect your Mac hardware or OS. Did the tools give it a clean bill of health, or did they repair anything?

 

[mokey]

oh im such a twit... im on os 9.2

they repaired dates and stuff. nothing major, they all said minor repairs. but that was straight from install so i figured it was from the cd (messed up dates) anyway, the only file that has a major prob is the pref file for civ3. it always has to be deleted because its unrepairable. even after the first game after fresh install.

i did get a referbished mac, but i dont seem to have any other probs, and since installing this new game, my 'puter freezes all the time too, whether im in ie, the game, other games, quark or photoshop.

everything seems to point to the game. i did get some new memory, but the chips dont seem to have anything wrong with them either. so i dunno. id hate to have to scrap this game and get a new one. i bought it from the local apple store, but i dont think i saved the receipt. i dont think you can exchange them anyway.

any ideas?

 

[AlanH]

If it's freezing in IE, Quark and Photoshop when the game isn't runninig then you can discount the game. It's not guilty. It can't exercise any evil influence over the other apps when it's just sitting on your hard drive. So if anything's going back to the store it isn't Civ3.

So what else? My finger of suspicion would rest first on that memory you added. Where did you get it, and how do you know there's nothing wrong with the chips? You can't tell by looking at them, you know Did you take suitable anti-static precautions when you installed it?

What's left if you remove the added memory? Enough to run stuff? I so do it and see if it's more stable. If not, I can only suggest you either return the memory for a replacement or, if that's not possible, replace it anyway.

 

[mokey]

well i will know more sunday... having a "mac guru" friend look at it then. but i still dont get any saves. i played until the year 650ad, saved about a dozen times then it crashed and when i rebooted... nothing in my save or auto save folders. i even searched all files modified today and there were no save files to be found. even if it is bad mem chips... what would explain the saving prob? i see all the saves in the game, everytime i save i see the list of my previous saves for that game. then when it crashes they arent there. not even when i quit the program before it crashes and check, it just isnt saving the games to the save folder.

 

[AlanH]

There's no command that I know of that could delete files in the Saves and Saves/Auto folders at a single stroke, while leaving the folders themselves empty but intact.

I still think the biggest clue you have provided is that other apps are also unstable.

If you don't run Civ3 after a reboot do your other apps behave themselves? Or are they still unstable? If they are unstable when Civ3 has not even run on the system then it cannot be Civ3 that's responsible, as it can do absolutely nothing to your computer while it's sitting inert on your hard drive. If they only become unstable after you have run Civ3 then I'll consider the possibility that Civ3 *might* be involved.

One other question: How full is your hard drive?

 

[mokey]

ok i have my results.... i do believe it was the 1.29fbeta2 patch that was the prob with my game. i ran resedit on the pref file (because its always corrupt) and sure enough it wouldnt even open, that was with the patch. so i uninstalled the game and reinstalled it and tested the new pref file and it was ok, so im thinking the patch didnt like my yosemite. anyway, i think i also got the crashing prob solved, though it will take more days to be sure its still not crashing, we rearranged the chips so that the biggest were first... im not a techy so i didnt know that would be a problem... still learning tech stuff... anyway, my guru wasnt sure that was the prob either but it couldnt hurt to do it either, and low and behold smurf hasnt crashed since (knock on wood)

so i guess i cant run the patch, which sucks, but maybe i will try again later, maybe the installer became corrupted when i downloaded it or something. its worth a try anyway...

thanx for all your help, and if you have anymore suggestions im all ears!

 

[AlanH]

As I'm not at all sure what order you did things in I can't really comment on your results, except to say that I think it's very unlikely that the order the chips are in would have any effect. It's more likely that they are working better after being removed and reinstalled and seated properly.

If the memory was causing your crashes in other apps then all bets are off with regard to the problems with Civ3 until you do a new clean installation and download a new clean copy of the 1.29b2 updater and apply that. I sincerely doubt that a fully-working Yosemite has any compatibility problems with Civ3 at any version.

 

[mokey]

its been a couple days and my smurf hasnt crashed once, and civ hasnt had any probs saving either. so who knows what fixed it. as long as it stays fixed! anyway as soon as i complete one full game in civ i will download the patch and try again. the only game i completed was when i opened next to a barbarian, that game ended right quick!

thanks for all your help, and hopefully when i reinstall the patch everything will play nice still. hopefully switching to panther in the next couple weeks, i want to get a new 120gb hard drive first... CANT WAIT!!