Very Serious Problem

[Thorgrimm]

Hi,

OK, so the _CivConfig file opened...

That entry in the registry seems fine to me, assuming that is the path where you have Civ installed.

A few questions:
- is your My Documents folder OK (the whole folder), I mean, does it have the files and folders it should have? (Including the My Games\<any_games> subfolders)
- You did uninstalled civ and then reinstalled it, right?
- When you unistalled civ, did you choose something like, delete personal logs, save games or something like that?, 'cause if you didn't perhaps the mess was kept, and hence ported to the new installation

The my documents folder was ok. Everything was still there.
Yes I uninstalled it and I think I kept something. So I am going to try it again. Only this time after the uninstall I am going to wipe out anything civ 4 in the firaxis folder, then delete that. Then make sure every Reg entry is wiped. I am going to make sure civ4 is completely purged. Since what ever happened was not removed by the last uninstall.

Wish me luck because if I cannot fix this, my civ4 playing days are over and I will throw the damn game into the garbage.



Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[Premier Valle]

The my documents folder was ok. Everything was still there.
Yes I uninstalled it and I think I kept something. So I am going to try it again. Only this time after the uninstall I am going to wipe out anything civ 4 in the firaxis folder, then delete that. Then make sure every Reg entry is wiped. I am going to make sure civ4 is completely purged. Since what ever happened was not removed by the last uninstall.

I was going to suggest that, good thinking!

Wish me luck because if I cannot fix this, my civ4 playing days are over and I will throw the damn game into the garbage.

Now that is too extreme, I have other solutions for you but they are too time consuming:
· whole OS reinstall (guaranteed to work)
· ask firaxis for help


Of course, it is a pain to reinstall the Operating System, but I would be willing to it rather than give up civ (not that I have much time to play tho)

 

[Thorgrimm]

I was going to suggest that, good thinking!



Now that is too extreme, I have other solutions for you but they are too time consuming:
· whole OS reinstall (guaranteed to work)
· ask firaxis for help


Of course, it is a pain to reinstall the Operating System, but I would be willing to it rather than give up civ (not that I have much time to play tho)

I did a complete uninstall, removing all traces of civ 4, folders, reg entries everything. No go, still the same problem. As for reinstalling the OS, thats not an option. Too much work to reinstall all the various drivers and apps I have on here. Just much simpler to dump civ 4 mods.

One interesting li'l tidbit though, a complete uninstall of civ 4 isn't; it leaves about 450 MBs on your hdd. I would have liked to have known that earlier.

The only way it seems I can play a mod now is if I mod the files in the actual game. The Blue Marble mod works just fine since it modifies the game's actual files.

what amazes me is that out of all the civer's who haunt this fora, nobody but you and Refar has tried to help. I can't believe this has never happened before and nobody has seen this problem.

EDIT: Could a mod move this thread to technical support?



Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[Premier Valle]

Don't give up man!

More questions:
· When you reinstalled the game, did you allow the Civ folders in "My Games\" to be rebuilt again or you used what you already had?

· When you reinstalled the game, did you reinstalled the mods again?, or just copy pasted them or something?

· did you try to load an official mod before installing your mods? (i.e. with a brand new installation)

· Did you deleted the registry entries yourself (because there are more civ entries than those I told you before)

· have you tried to load the mods using shortcuts to them? (i.e. without starting the normal game)

Other thing:
- in regedit follow this:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders

In the "Personal" entry, you should see something like: %USERPROFILE%\My Documents
What happens if you enter such path in a windows explorer?.

I've been searching, and this is supposed to tell the OS where is your "My Documents" folder,

- In the: My Games\BtS\Logs\Init.log I have:

Spoiler :

[4147.156] DBG: CIV Init
[4147.156] VERSION: App: D:\Archivos de programa\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe
[4147.156] VERSION: Build: Fri Sep 21 13:16:18 2007
[4147.156] VERSION: 3.0.0.1 (81539)
[4159.781] VERSION: Mod Loaded: C:\Documents and Settings\Homero Valle\Mis documentos\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Babylon 5\
[4159.781] DBG: FILE Cat Init

Do you have something similar?

---
Come on man!, I'll be adding a couple Brakiri capital ships later in the day... and I don't want to feel like I have left someone behind.

 

[Thorgrimm]

Don't give up man!

More questions:
· When you reinstalled the game, did you allow the Civ folders in "My Games\" to be rebuilt again or you used what you already had?

· When you reinstalled the game, did you reinstalled the mods again?, or just copy pasted them or something?

· did you try to load an official mod before installing your mods? (i.e. with a brand new installation)

· Did you deleted the registry entries yourself (because there are more civ entries than those I told you before)

· have you tried to load the mods using shortcuts to them? (i.e. without starting the normal game)

Other thing:
- in regedit follow this:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders

In the "Personal" entry, you should see something like: %USERPROFILE%\My Documents
What happens if you enter such path in a windows explorer?.

I've been searching, and this is supposed to tell the OS where is your "My Documents" folder,

- In the: My Games\BtS\Logs\Init.log I have:

Spoiler :

[4147.156] DBG: CIV Init
[4147.156] VERSION: App: D:\Archivos de programa\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe
[4147.156] VERSION: Build: Fri Sep 21 13:16:18 2007
[4147.156] VERSION: 3.0.0.1 (81539)
[4159.781] VERSION: Mod Loaded: C:\Documents and Settings\Homero Valle\Mis documentos\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Babylon 5\
[4159.781] DBG: FILE Cat Init

Do you have something similar?

---
Come on man!, I'll be adding a couple Brakiri capital ships later in the day... and I don't want to feel like I have left someone behind.

1. I removed all civ 4 folders. They were rebuilt.

2. I have not installed any fan mods yet. only tried to use the ones that come with the expansions.

3. I do not know of the other reg entries, could you give them to me for removal?

4. no shortcuts used, only through the game itself.

5. Nothing in my documents is having trouble. And IIRC, all BTS mods can be loaded from the mod folder in the BTS directory. Thats where all my mods were.

Below is my BTS init log:

Spoiler :

[16854.921] DBG: CIV Init
[16854.921] VERSION: App: C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe
[16854.921] VERSION: Build: Fri Sep 21 14:16:18 2007
[16854.921] VERSION: 3.0.0.1 (81539)
[16855.250] VERSION: Mod Loaded: none
[16855.265] DBG: FILE Cat Init

Dude, you do not know how much I want to help playtest this mod. I loved B5 better than any tv show except ST: TOS and Space: Above and Beyond. So this problem is VERY frustrating for me.



Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[Premier Valle]

What about the:
%USERPROFILE%\My Documents


As for the other registry entries here are some:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.Civ4Replay

There are A LOT I would suggest using the search tool.

No other application that uses "My Documents" is failing?

 

[Thorgrimm]

What about the:
%USERPROFILE%\My Documents


As for the other registry entries here are some:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.Civ4Replay

There are A LOT I would suggest using the search tool.

No other application that uses "My Documents" is failing?

Userprofile is ok.

No other app is having any problems at all.

Ok, I will use the Find function.

 

[Premier Valle]

New idea!!!!

What about creating a new user, installing the game just for that user and in another path different than c:\Program Files

 

[Thorgrimm]

New idea!!!!

What about creating a new user, installing the game just for that user and in another path different than c:\Program Files

Thats an idea, but the reason I use HP_Administrator as a user profile is that I do not know how to so such things in XP.

So I would need instructions on how to do such a thing.



Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[Premier Valle]

Its not a big deal:

· open the "control panel"
· if needed select "classic view"
· open "user accounts"

there you should saw an option to create a new user account, shouldn't be much of a problem to create a new account, pretty straight forward, just remember that you'll need to set the new account with administration permissions, so you'll be able to install applications.

Pretty easy you'll know what to do.

PS: remember that I use windows in spanish so perhaps some stuff will have other names than those I translated.

 

[deanej]

Two things to try:
1. Allow hidden files/folders to be viewed if they aren't already. You may actually have "Mis documentos", but hidden from view (disregard if already checked).

2. If you wouldn't mind re-installing civ again, you can use Microsoft's free OneCare safety scanner to take care of the registry entries (do it after uninstalling civ but before resinstalling it). It should detect the entries as unused and remove them.

 

[Thorgrimm]

Two things to try:
1. Allow hidden files/folders to be viewed if they aren't already. You may actually have "Mis documentos", but hidden from view (disregard if already checked).

2. If you wouldn't mind re-installing civ again, you can use Microsoft's free OneCare safety scanner to take care of the registry entries (do it after uninstalling civ but before resinstalling it). It should detect the entries as unused and remove them.

1, I have them unhidden, from before the problem began.

2. I did a find in regedit and removed about 40 civ4 entries. Then scanned the registry for civ 4, warlords and Beyond the Sword. Registry was clean.

Did another uninstall after doing that. This time I even removed the civ4 data that was in the Application Data and Local Settings folders in the My Documents folder. Still a no go.

There was nothing on that hard drive for civ 4. I even did a find file or folders search from the start menu. No files were found. So I am stumped and ready to give up.

For some reason, the normal games work just fine. But something is preventing me from using any mods. I even tried to load the tutorial, no dice. So, somehow the game is seeing the mods, I can choose them, but as soon as I clikc the ok button it dumps me out to my desktop. No error message, nothing. Civ 4 just stops running.

 

[Premier Valle]

Did you try the new user?

 

[Thorgrimm]

Did you try the new user?

Yeah, no go. Still had the same problem. In every single log civ 4 spits out there is no error, no fail ti init, nothing. Its like civ is just shutting down instead of loading a mod. Very frustrating.

Did you get those excellent Brakiri ships in yet?




Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[Premier Valle]

Its just getting too weird, I'm even starting to believe we are dealing with a bug, have you contacted firaxis?

--
On the brakiri ships, I've downloaded them, but haven't modded them in yet, i was looking forward to modding them yesterday, but something beer got in the way .

Most likely until sunday, 'cause I have another "something" tomorrow

 

[Thorgrimm]

Its just getting too weird, I'm even starting to believe we are dealing with a bug, have you contacted firaxis?

--
On the brakiri ships, I've downloaded them, but haven't modded them in yet, i was looking forward to modding them yesterday, but something beer got in the way .

Most likely until sunday, 'cause I have another "something" tomorrow

At first I was beginning to suspect it was a bug to. But I have done a virus check with three different programs, key loggers, malware, spyware, you name it and I looked for it. And if its a bug, its a VERY specific bug. Only civ 4, and nothing but civ 4 is having problems.

We need to go about this from another direction. We know the base games work just fine. So everything is installed correctly. Anything modding the base games also works correctly, Blue Marble for example.

So what we need to focus on is what in civ 4 would prevent ANY mod from loading? How does civ 4 go about looking for and loading a mod? if we can get the steps in that process we can begin eliminating what could be preventing the mod to load and shutting down civ. Since I am becoming more and more conviced civ is not crashing, but shutting itself down.

But the fly in the ointment is that I have no idea how to go about getting that information though.



Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[deanej]

Well I think civ starts by loading the mod files, then CustomAssets, then Beyond the Sword, then Warlords, and finally Vanilla.

 

[Thorgrimm]

Well I think civ starts by loading the mod files, then CustomAssets, then Beyond the Sword, then Warlords, and finally Vanilla.

So where do you think I should start looking for what is preventing the loading of mod files? is there a central place the game looks at?



Cheers, Thorgrimm

 

[Chuggi]

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Sorry couldn't resist.

Maybe if you just create the reverse of the batch file, so if there were any hidden folders called "Mis Documentos" it would rename them back to My Documents, maybe. I'm surprised that creating a new user and installing it for that new user didn't work, because if it didn't than I'm pretty sure it would mean that it has nothing to do with the My Documents issue.

Did the batch file do anything else at all, besides renaming My Documents? Also, how many user profiles do you have? You might have to delete the Mis Documentos from the guest profiles and the ones you're not using.

 

[Thorgrimm]

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Sorry couldn't resist.

Maybe if you just create the reverse of the batch file, so if there were any hidden folders called "Mis Documentos" it would rename them back to My Documents, maybe. I'm surprised that creating a new user and installing it for that new user didn't work, because if it didn't than I'm pretty sure it would mean that it has nothing to do with the My Documents issue.

Did the batch file do anything else at all, besides renaming My Documents? Also, how many user profiles do you have? You might have to delete the Mis Documentos from the guest profiles and the ones you're not using.

I checked every possible document location, HP_Administrator, Administrator, All Users, and even the hidden Local Users.

In tech support Ori gave a very detailed list of things to uninstall and I followed it to the letter. Still no go.

As an experiment I want to try and load a mod from the get go, without pre-starting civ. Maybe that might force an error somewhere. So how would I go about doing that?



Cheers, Thorgrimm