Wont load at all, Please help!!

[chadd]

Hi, I bought Civ's 4 today, loaded it all onto my pc, when I click on the run icon I get a small window appear with a bar showing its loading with text in the bar but when it gets to the end, says done nothing happens the box stays in the middle of the screen, i get the game sursor up and i hear the music from the game. It then freezes my pc, but i am able to shut it down via the windows task manager.

Any ideas on how I can even get this game to work, my pc has everything needed to run it. I run other games perfectly.

hope you can help. cheers

 

[Dadstauf]

After updating all drivers etc. I tried creating a new user in XP. Worked for me after that.

 

[Zydor]

You have problems with that video card - its minimal forthe game.barely up to spec. If at allpossible I strongly advise you to get a mid range card - they are not that expensive these days. Talk to HP about a possible upgrade, then check here with what you were told before buying

Hardware specs for Civ IV:
http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_msr.htm

Meanwhile ..

You loaded straight from the box, so it will be V1. There is a Patch V1.52, its essential you load it, it fixed many memory hassles. Its a big patch, 44 Mb soif you on dialup, set it running overnight and go to sleep, will be there in the morning ....

When loaded, go to :
C:\Documents and Settings\New User\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini

Open it in Notepad,scroll down to "memsaver" and make sure its set to 0 (figure 0 not letter O)

Try these, all will reduce the load on your graphics which is your weak point

- Turn off textures in the game Options menu
- Set the game resolution to as low as possible
- set your desktop resolution to the same as you are going to use in the game
- set the desktop refresh rate to 60Hz
- Turn off any background application or services running that you dont really need (via MSconfig). That includes going off line to play Civ, and turning off Anti-V & Firewall.
- Set your pagefile to 2000mb, min=max

Video Drivers
The Video drivers you have are outdated (2003), download new drivers from here
http://www.omegadrivers.net/
Scroll down that page until you see Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.97a (Catalyst 4.12) they are not the latest,but they are a very stable reliable set, and probably better for your older setup. If they dont work properly, try Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.83 (Catalyst 5.11) at the top of the page

If you still have no significant performance increase, and I have doubts that you will, in my opinion it will be a Video upgrade as your graphics setup is bare minimum if the PC will take one - talk to HP about that

Any hassles doing the above, dont hesitate to post,we will help where we can

Regards
Zy

 

[chadd]

cheers for the help ill have a go