System freeze when exiting to desktop

[zulu9812]

Whenever I Exit to Desktop, my PC freezes (running Civ4 1.61). Mouse won't move, Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work, nothing. So I hit the reset buttong, the computer reboots and I get a message saying that Windows has recovered from a major system error. Not terribly critical, just annoying and slightly worrying. Any ideas?

System specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3.8 GHz dual-core
2GB RAM
nVidia drivers 84.21
Windows XP Pro SP2
nVidia GeForce 6600 256 MB in a single SLI slot

 

[crunch]

Morale of the story: don't turn Civ off at all!

Now some random ideas:
- try playing the game in a window, perhaps you will be able to see some error message that way...
- don't quit the game, use Ctrl+Alt+Delete to access task manager, click on Civ4 process and end it.