Screen goes blank in large games

[NightOwl]

I have a decent system, and yet for large games in Civ IV (version 1.61) my screen goes completely black during the game, when I attempt to scroll around the world. It is difficult to get back to Windows because the screen stays completely black, and sometimes I have had to do a cold reboot. This happens for large games, late in the game. There are some games that I cannot finish on this computer. I have tried a number of fixes suggested in this forum, including lowering the graphic settings for the game and turning off the animations, updating the video drivers to the latest (this didn't help), rolling back the video drivers (this delayed the onset a little). Cutting back on memory usage by other programs, especially by my antivirus program (Trend Micro Internet Security) has also delayed the onset of the problem until later in the game, as has using window mode. Once in a while I get a "Failed to allocate video memory" error instead.

Since I rolled back the video drivers I have been able to get the taskbar back by hitting the Windows key, and then have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and end the Civ IV process in order to get anything on my screen again. Oddly, the task manager shows no graph for the CPU Usage History, until I do a reboot. I can't restart the game until after I reboot.

My system is a Dell Dimension 8400 with 1 GB RAM, Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, an NVidia GeForce 6800 with 256 MB RAM, on a Dell 1905FP monitor.

I have access to another computer with similar specs (eMachines T6536 with AMD Athlon 63 3800+, 1 GB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS with 256 MB RAM) that is able to run the same saved games without incident.

Has anyone else gotten this problem? Perhaps it has a similar cause to the game crashes for large games reported elsewhere? I am wondering if this is a video card problem or a memory leak or both. Since the video card appears to be messed up after this happens, is there a way to reset the video card after this happens?

 

[trythis]

Nightowl,

Ever since I upgraded my video card to a 6800XT I have had the same issue with the game as you, screen just goes blank. Mine happens though randomly, within 5 min of starting to maybe over 1 hr. Start of games, mid game, you name it. It has been driving me nuts. I have tried everything you stated.

I contacted take 2 support and so far they have had me reinstall my video driver, reinstall the game several times different ways, and I gave up with them when they wanted me to update my firmware on my dvd drive. Why, who knows.

If you come up with a solution, let me know and vice versa.

 

[Artosoft]

Looks like the problem lies around nvidia graphics card.

Sorry, I can't help much.

Regards,
Arto.

 

[NightOwl]

I'll keep investigating, but it sounds like a problem with the video card. The problem does not happen too often if I play smaller games. The problem gets worse for large games, or late in a medium sized game. There are large games that I can't finish at all. I wonder if anyone else is able to play this game using a Nvidea GeForce 6800 card without incident, and if so, what version of video driver they are using.

 

[italianbuddha99]

same thing for me but my screen goes black right at the beginning of a game....

ive unistalled it and reinstalled it many many times

this problem started right off the bat on installing the game the first time then i fixed it and this problem came back when i patched it then i uninstalled it and reinstalled it and added the patch and the problem went away then i tried to mod the game and it came back so... i uninstalled it and reinstalled it and now the problem is back with an unpatched un moded game so i dont know what to do.

 

[trythis]

Are either of you 2 making any headway with your issue? I believe I have made some but have a few questions for you.

Are either of you running Blakes Better AI? Secondly, do either of you have either a screen saver turned on or any power options turned on such as cutting power to the monitor after a set amount of time?

Also, check your logs and see if that can resolve your issue.

I'll get back to you after a little more testing and cue you in on my results.

 

[italianbuddha99]

i have a screen saver on that i downloaded off the family guy website, and my screen turns off after a while if its idle.

no clue what blakes better AI ia so prolly not

logs?

 

[legendor]

When you install a new game, users are recommended to make sure that game is in a firewall exception list. Usually, nobody reminds that all large memory programs such as civ4 needs to be listed into a exception list in "Data Execution"-windows system program to limit certain amount of memory. I am not fully sure if my suggestion will solve the issue, but try this.

1)Start
2)Right-Click My Computer
3)Properties
4)Advance Tab
5)Performance Settings
6)Data Execution Prevention
7)Select "except those I choose" the second one
8)add all civ4.exe files from your install directory. eg. program files/sid../civ4...
9)Apply and OK
10)launch and test the game

I hope it helps

 

[trythis]

Italianbuddha199,

I have got my game working much better but yet to proclaim it fixed. Here is what I have found and done.

I went to the start, my documents, my games, warlords, logs and found a init file, Err2 file, resmgr file, and also xml file. That it what is normal. Also I found several other files pointing to my ip address being renewed. I checked and it seems that my router is only renewing my lease on my NIC card for about 10 min or so (nic card running DHCP). To eliminate that as my issue I disable the card each time I play.

I do not have a screen saver set but do have my monitor set to turn off after 5 min of inactivity, I set this to never before playing. This seems to have helped much.

I would suggest that you try to turn off your screen saver, set you power option for your monitor to never turn off and give that a try. If it continues to blank out on you I would be checking into those log files.

Keep me posted on if this helps and what you find.

 

[NightOwl]

I finally found a solution. The problem apparently was caused by my antivirus software, Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security 2007. The 2007 edition is a huge memory hog, and is very slow to load, and slows my computer down a lot. After trying many tricks to get Civ 4 to work (as I mentioned before), I uninstalled PC-cillin, and the game has never crashed since then, even in a big game. PC-cillin also prevented Half-Life 2 from running on my computer. That game also runs ok after I uninstalled PC-cillin (and my computer is fast again!). I am going back to the 2006 edition of PC-cillin (since I paid for 2 years of it, unfortunately) and see if that works ok.

 

[Ghost Ranger]

Yeah, Commercial Antivirus software is usually very bloated, I would recommend that you get AVG, it is free and very light on resources, and it also works very well. (in my opinion at least)