video problems?

[mrzebra]

I installed Civilization 3 yesterday. I upgraded to the most recent patch before running it. When I did run it, I got nothing but a black screen. I could hear the intro music, but could not see anything. I got some help from the guys in the chat and added Refresh=60 to my civilization3.ini file. After that, the intro movie would play perfectly, but when it would switch to (what I assume is) the initial splash screen for the game, it's all black. The music still plays, and I can click around blindly and find the Quit button if I'm lucky.
I can't even ALT-TAB back to my desktop. That stays black as well.
I've updated to the latest drivers (nVidia for Windows 2000), but that doesn't seem to have helped anything at all.
I also play Stronghold, which runs just fine.
Any ideas?

 

[mrzebra]

NEVERMIND. Got it fixed. WAHOO.
In case anyone else has the same problem, make sure you have the correct driver for your monitor. I had a little trouble doing that because I didn't have the correct video card driver either, so it wouldn't let me change the one for the monitor. But I got them both up and running now and Civilization 3 looks gorgeous.

 

[King Elvis]

I got the same problem... My syst :

P!!!866
Asus Cuv4x -D
256MB
nvidia TNT2 M64/M64 Pro 32MB
WinXP Home Edition
GTC Advantage Monitor

I dunno anything about computer stuff, all I know is Rock N' Roll. I just got this game my brother gave me as a birthday present, but I dunno how to make it work. I've been all over forum, I think this thread mrzebra wrote is exactly same problem with what I got. But I don't know what to do... how can I obtain proper driver for my monitor / graph card ?... what to do ? plz help...

 

[King Elvis]

I went to www.windriver.com they don't help me for free. They want my money... aarrrghhh...

 

[King Elvis]

Bump...
Somebody please... I know the game was okay in exactly same PC running Win98SE, but since I went to XP, I couldnt start it well. I installed the latest driver, installed the latest patch, but it just doesn't work... Pretty same problem with mrzebra. Blank, though I hear the music background. I change my monitor several type several time, restart the machine over and over... just nothing happens. I believe there's many computer expert here to ask for help. Please...

 

[mrzebra]

Well, this (http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_40.72) should be the driver you need for your video card. That should allow you to specify the correct driver for your monitor, which you may have some trouble finding. I looked all over the web and couldn't find any drivers for any GTC monitors. Maybe the generic Windows Plug & Play driver will work. I don't know.
Other than that, make sure you add Refresh=60 to your civilization3.ini file.
Good luck.

 

[King Elvis]

Thank you so much for your link & info mrzebra. It's very kind of you. I still download it by now, tell you latter if it works I'll be rockin' those countries... just wait... hhmmmm...

 

[Captain Ferret]

I think this is a Win 2K/XP problem. I've had a couple of games do this (ptw and Fifa 2003) whilst I was running Win 2K then I tried them on win98 and had no troubles at all. Incidentally, I don't think the 40.72 drivers from nvidia like win2k much, I couldn't get the geforce3 tab on advanced display properties to work and I was getting little glitches all over the show. Anyone heard anything about this?

 

[Xenon666]

Im having almost the exact problem..

When I first play Civ3 (v1.29f) after starting Windows XP, it runs fine. But if I quit the game and try to play again later (in the same Windows session) i get a blank screen instead of the game menu. I can hear the music but can't see anything. To be able to play again i'm forced to reboot.

That's very annoying, and i've tried everything possible, including several the tips from this forum and changing the video card/monitor/directX drivers to the latest versions, without any success.

What intrigues me most is why the game only works when first played on a windows session, and not after again..

Video driver: NVidia Detonator Riva TNT2 Ultra v40.72 WinXP
Monitor driver: Samsung SyncMaster 753DFX v1.1

 

[Xenon666]

Ho ho ho... Finally man! Blank screen problems are over!

Just get the new NVidia Detonator drivers (v41.09), released this week.