Updating Sound Card Driver

[generalshake]

Greetings,

I have finally fixed the problem I was having getting the game to play. Now I'm having the CTD and Reboot problems while playing the game. It mainly shows up on the middle ages scenario that I'm playing multiplayer with a friend. Her computer runs it fine, no CTD or Reboots. Her processor is a touch slower than mine, but graphics card is the same (only mine is an older version a GeForce5950 Ultra or something like that to her 6800GT). She has 2gig of Ram to my 1gig.

The main purpose of this post though is about uninstalling my sound card driver. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. She has a Sound Blaster Live. When I was updating and changing the sound card driver I would remove the old one. I would do this by going into the add/remove program thing and remove it. This is the problem I am having now. I changed over to the beta one for the audigy that is out now. I was going to try and roll back to the older ones, but can't seem to find the driver listed on the add/remove. My graphics card is on there and I have rolled that back many times.

Should I be concerned about not seeing the driver listed on my add/remove. The first time I think it was some EAS or something like that. I have removed anything with creative in the name (some media thing and a cdburner) in the hopes that was it, but it didn't prompt me to restart so sure it wasn't it. I have just installed the older drivers and then the beta again and still shows nothing.

Any help would be appreciated, both on the sound card driver and on limiting the CTDs. I just fail to see how her computer doesn't have this problem while mine is slightly better and has it. (It's getting to the 1900's and I crash or freeze and then crash about every other turn).

 

[Equisilus]

While it's always nice to be able to remove old drivers completely before installing new ones, I've been updating sound drivers for years without worrying over removing the old ones first. The only times I remove the old drivers completely is when I replace the card. I wouldn't be overly concerned about the drivers not being listed in the Add/Remove Progams, although I noticed mine, for reference, were listed under "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS", not "Creative".

 

[generalshake]

Ah that's good to know. I noticed it shows that I've updated the sound card driver, but I still don't see any mention of it on the add/remove /shrug lol.

Wanted to thank you for ya post though. Also wanted to go into the problem I'm having with Civ4 (pre patch and post patch). Since rolling my graphics driver to 71.89 and using the latest (beta even) driver for my sound card, clearing the cache folder each time, and closing out all programs I've been able to reduce my freeze ups and CTD. I now have a new, but similiar problem.

What happens is I'll be playing and then the game will freeze and the speakers will make a sound like a cd skipping and then the computer restarts. While rolling drivers back and such I've had this mixed in with freeze ups that required a manual restart and a CTD. So far I've reduced it down to just every 10-25 turns or so, but it never fails to restart the computer now.

I was hoping the patch (1.09) would fix it but no luck. It's funny as my wife's computer runs the game with out a problem (for hours upon hours).

For reference here's our setups.

Mine : p4 3.2gig , GeForce5950 Ultra 256mb, SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS, 1gig of ram.

Her's : p4 3.0 , GeForce 6800 GT 256mb, SoundBlaster Live, 2gig of ram.

Any suggestions on solving this would be great. As I've ran dry on ideas. I've done it all, rolling drivers from newest to older ones. I've been doing the .bat and running Civ4 at high. Tried windowed mode. Just so frustrating, but should be happy hers doesn't crash as at least it lets me load back into the game and haven't lost any turns do to not being saved.

 

[Equisilus]

Have you tried running the game with a minimum of other programs running in the background? Sometimes other things can eat up resources that your game requires to keep up to speed. For instance, I usually block net traffic and disable antivirus programs at the minimum when I play a game (unless I need the net open, in which case I don't bother). Disabling background programs also prevents conflicts between the programs, not just freeing up resources (although your system should run the game fine, it seems).

So, I'd get down to your taskbar as a first step and start shutting down everything you are able before starting the game up. See how it goes.

 

[CarbonToast]

I just got on the forums to figure out if anyone else was having CTD and lockup problems. I haven't looked deep enough into the forums yet to find a fix (if one exists), but the fact that someone is having the same problems as I on the second post I looked at can't be good.

Here is the interesting bit, I have an almost identical system, and I'm getting the same issues. I haven't had it reboot yet but it will crash or lock up every 10-25 turns. Mostly after the map starts to get crowded.

I allowed the game to make a crash dump, and theres an autosave that I can restore and it will crash about 2 minutes after loading without fail. I would love to be able to send these somewhere so they can be looked at and our problem fixed. Hopefully I can find out who can look at them.

My system, for reference:
p4 3.2ghz, GeForce FX 5900 Ultra (81.94), SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS (WDM driver dated 10/14/2004 v5.12.2.444), 1gig ram