unique problem?

[nistelroy]

so i just recently purchased the expansion Beyond the Sword and have started having issues...the game was running very smoothly when i first started the game

at about the year 1500 AD, i've started having problems...every time i end my turn it takes about a minute to two minutes other civs to make their moves..after a few turns of this nonsense, the game eventually freezes up and my computer restarts
i've been looking for info on this problem and have seen that maybe its the vassal colonies? something to do witha bug or something? its just weird cause the game was running so smoothly and now its constantly . .. .. .. .ing up and other civ's turns which used to only take a couple of seconds last minutes, and then eventually the game freezes

my graphics card isgood i think (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT) and i have over 80 GB of memory on my computer..Pentium D..i cant see what the problem might be...i've gone to 'advanced' on the main screen and clicked 'check for updates' to search for any new patches, but it says there is nothing new to update

like i said, just bought game last week, and it came out like what, 2 years ago? cant figure out the problem? could it may just be a problem with the disk itself? i dont know..any help is very appreciated..this is driving me nuts

 

[ori]

welcome to cfc
a restart is almost certainly a hardware problem. The game does put extreme strains on some of it - especially the graphics card. Does the computer make any louder than normal noises before restarting?
also please look in the windows event manager and check for any error messages.

 

[nistelroy]

yes it does make some weird noises, and when i get back on the computer after it has restarted, it says that "windows has recovered from a serious error"

i dont understand tho why it would run so smoothly in the beginning (it was running faster than my Warlods expansion did), and now all of a sudden its doing this..

 

[ori]

my guess is that your graphics card is overheating (the noise is the internal fans starting to work really hard to cool it down). all computers force a shutdown at a preset temperature.
does the error message give any more information?
try this:

open your computer (it is a desktop, right?) and clean the interior of any dust buildup - e.g. with a low intensity vacuum or just by carefully brushing/blowing the dust out of it.