Fixing Civ4 Problems: START HERE!

[snoopy369]

Although not every problem with Civ4 running can be easily identified, and there is no way to guarantee your problem is identifiable or (easily) solveable, there are several things that can be done to increase the likelihood of fixing your problem!

Links to discussion threads are provided where appropriate. I don't intend this thread to be a discussion thread per se, but simply a reference; please only post if you have suggested fixes that aren't included here.

Edit by Solver. Please note that the official Civ4 1.61 patch is available for download and should be applied to your game.

Fixes for general crash problems

1. Make sure your OS is fully updated. This means if you run Windows XP, you should be at SP2. Windows 2000 should be at SP4. This is important because sometimes updated drivers don't work (well) with older versions of Windows.
   
2. Make sure your Video Card drivers are updated. Both ATI and nVidia are polite enough to provide simple to use drivers that are 'generic', ie work on most or all cards of their brand. ATI drivers and nVidia drivers
   Omega: Some ATI cards (and even nVidia cards) have reported greater success rates with the Omega drivers. These are THIRD PARTY DRIVERS that are NOT guaranteed to work with any particular card, and may reduce performance. Back your system up (or set a system restore point) BEFORE installing them.
   You also should consider un-installing old video drivers before installing new ones (especially Omega); ATI uninstaller will help with ATI; nVidia suggests you simply use the add/remove programs control panel (which should work for ATI as well). This thread discusses the drivers for ATI and the Omega drivers.
   
3. Update your Motherboard drivers and BIOS. Especially with integrated video and sound chips, this can help improve performance immensely, and can solve a multitude of problems. Go to your motherboard's manufacturer (and/or chipset manufacturer) to find the appropriate drivers; there are also many 3rd party sites for this, although not all are safe or recommended.
   Here is Intel's site for those of you who use their boards.
4. Update your Sound card drivers. You would be surprised at how many crashes, even ones that 'look' to be video crashes, are caused by sound cards. Creative's support site for Sound Blaster cards; otherwise go to your sound card manufacturer's website.
5. Video and Sound system settings. If updating the drivers don't solve the problem, it's possible there is an issue with one of your settings that is incorrectly matching your system, and/or simply not functioning with the game. Examples include:
   * Video Settings: AGP related settings have been reported to help (either disabling AGP texture accellerationg entirely through DirectX/dxdiag, or changing the speeds through the BIOS). Access dxdiag through start->run->"dxdiag" and then choose the Display tab.
   * Video settings: AntiAliasing has been reported to cause some problems, and is actually often a problem-causer, particularly for ATI cards for many games. Try turning it off through your video card's driver.
   * Audio settings: Turn hardware acceleration down or off entirely. This fixes many audio-caused problems.
   * Make sure your video card and audio card aren't immediately next to each other (physically) in your computer. The AGP port your video card is presumably in (assuming it's AGP) shares the first PCI port, and therefore if something else important (like the sound card!) is in that first PCI port, it will cause problems under heavy load. It is generally best to leave that first PCI port unused entirely, or at minimum put something low-bandwidth there (like a gameport card, or similar).
   * Page file/virtual memory settings: You may want to make sure your page file is set to a constant number (min and max are equal), about 1.5-2x your total system ram. You can access this through rightclicking on My Computer, selecting properties, and then the advanced tab -> performance options button. (Windows 2000; XP should be similar.) If you have 1GB of ram, set it to 1.5GB to 2GB (1500 to 2000 MB), but make sure both min and max sizes are equal.
   
6. Make sure you have the right version of DirectX. This means make sure you have the DirectX 9.0c that shipped with Civ 4. If you do have this, then running dxdiag should report on the first tab that your version is 4.09.0000.0904
7. Try running in windowed mode, or in fullscreen mode. It's possible that one may work but the other fail. You can access windowed mode from civilization4.ini in the \%username%\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\ directory; or in the program file directory under a shortcut called "_civ4config"; search for fullscreen=yes which indicates fullscreen mode; change it to no for windowed, or ask for a popup asking you which to choose at startup.
8. Clear your game cache every time you change something about the game. The cache stores several files from game to game, and it's possible an old problem could crop up again from these files. Delete the cache folder, and that should help. The cache folder is found in \%username%\Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\ directory. Application Data is a hidden folder and you must have view hidden folders turned on (Tools - Folder Options) to see it. Delete the Cache folder entirely (but only when not currently running civ4) and it will re-set the cache.
9. Restart Civ4 when you start to get problems. It's possible some problems might be caused by minor errors propogating into bigger ones.
10. Try reinstalling Civ4. It's possible there was an error during installation that re-installing should fix.
11. Reboot. You definitely need to reboot after installing Civ4 and playing it. It doesn't ask you to, but not doing so causes problems.
12. Try adding a new user to windows and then installing the game under that user. Often changes you made to something a long time ago, driver conflicts, software conflicts, etc. can break a game. Installing a new user from scratch can get around those (although it may require you to re-install other programs such as DSL/Cable modem programs, etc, under that new user as well, depending on how they installed). To do this (Under windows 2000, XP should be similar):
    1. Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Users and Passwords.
    2. Add button.
    3. Enter a user name you won't forget. Enter a password you won't forget.
    4. Add the user as an Administrator, under "other". (Power user may also work, but Administrator is a better bet, and is fine as long as you're not using a 'secure' or public computer).
    
    Then log out, and log in as that user. Make sure that under that user the updated drivers are installed, and any other programs you will need to play the game (they should be, but check!); and install civ4! Again, you may need to re-install things like MSN Messenger/AIM/etc., FireFox, and other programs, if they didn't install to "All Users".

[snoopy369]

Fixes for specific issues

1. ATI "Failed to initialize renderer" issue. First off, make sure you updated your video drivers, and installed directX from the cd. This fixes the majority of renderer errors. This thread addresses the driver updates.
   Second, try this fix, the "PAK" fix, if updating the drivers did not work. This fix particularly works for 256mb cards and may or may not help other cards.
   
2. XML parser issues. These are not always actually XML issues, as many times there is some problem that happens during XML parsing but related to something else; but this may help. This patch should update the system's XML parser to the newest version.
   It also looks like users of a european version of Civ 4 running on US Windows may have to change their language options to English (US) (in control panel), or may have to change it so that the . (period) is the decimal symbol and the , (comma) is the group symbol (in same control panel). This fixes an odd bug that appears at first glance to be audio-related.
   
3. Sound crashes on SB Live! particularly Live 5.1. These problems may be caused by the 'voice recording' device. Changing that device to 'onboard audio' (or disabling) may prevent certain crashes.
   
4. Stuttering Movies and particularly movie-related crashes. If the movies are hurting your gameplay to the point you would like them to be turned off, try going to the civilization4.ini file (located in \%username%\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\) and editing the entry "nomovies=0" to read "nomovies=1".

[snoopy369]

Reserved for thread directory.

Page File fix
PAK fix for Renderer Error, for XP
Windows 2000 PAK fix
Video Card list
Shader Settings fix

[snoopy369]

Images ...

DirectX dxdiag screen with correct DirectX version number:

[snoopy369]

System Requirements:

Windows 2000 (SP 1, but use SP 4) or Windows XP (SP 1, but use SP 2) (NOT compatible with ME, 98, 95, NT)
256mb Ram (SUGGEST: 512 min., 1024 pref.)
P4 1.2MHz or equivalent AMD (should be fine)
64mb Video Card with Hardware T+L (this list) (Recommend GeForce4+, ATI Radeon 9000+)
CD/DVD drive
1.7GB free space
DirectX9.0c (included) (Use Civ4 CD's DirectX - it's newer than some other 9.0c versions)

[Civfreak1970]

Very well presented! Yet you should also last but not least say the game could also need patching! Its so easy to point the finger at someones computer and vice versa towards the game! Yet I find it totally funny how I have had 99.9% Perfect computer usage of sowtware and alot of much more demanding then Civ4 and yet it must be my computer ..lol!

Yet Thank You for this hard work you just posted! I take it you work for Firaxis or Take2Games lol

Civfreak1970

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Civfreak1970
Yet Thank You for this hard work you just posted! I take it you work for Firaxis or Take2Games lol

I wish...

[q=Cvifreak 1970]Very well presented! Yet you should also last but not least say the game could also need patching! Its so easy to point the finger at someones computer and vice versa towards the game! Yet I find it totally funny how I have had 99.9% Perfect computer usage of sowtware and alot of much more demanding then Civ4 and yet it must be my computer ..lol!
[/q]

It's not necessarily that your computer is directly responsible for the crashes, per se, but that a conflict between two things, one in civ and one in your computer, is causing it. This guide explains how to fix many of those conflicts The fact that some people with any given specs can get it to work fine, while some others can't, indicates that it's not an insoluble problem with the game itself.

Even if there will someday (soon?) be a patch to fix the conflict, that doesn't mean there aren't things we can do, NOW, to fix the problems.

[Civfreak1970]

Anyways...My point was I shouldn't have had to bust my ass for 2 days to get it to run semi-stable! I've also seen people who have 2 computers the same spec and one runs and the other doesnt off and on lol! This leads me to believe the code is a bit flakey and a bit random on the crashes. I believe if most are like me and know their computer skills very well and dont have problems with 99.9% of their software they will have a hard time believing its their system...Yet I do understand your points!

Civfreak1970


PS..That also doesnt explain how in the hell they released the game with 25-50% of users needing to use a unpak patch to just install it lol! Things just add up into the fact that they goofed up!

[SpencerH]

The fix on the take2 site has them installing the 5.10 ati drivers in the middle of re-installing civ4.

So my question is this, the drivers for my 128 MB 9800 are old (but work fine with RoN, RTW, etc), should I install the new drivers prior to installing civ4 for the first time or wait and see what happens then install as per take2's instructions if I get the renderer error.

[Jerh9e1k5]

Try Civ4 out without updating the drivers first. Why go to the trouble if the problem isn't there?

Although keep one thing in mind: I had an ATI card and Civ4 would not work for me when I tried starting a new game. It would load up and I would press start game. At that point it would freeze. I didn't get an error message. I didn't know what to do so as a last resort I tried te renderer error fix thinking that perhaps it may have somehting to do with my problem.

And it worked!

[drvo]

I can not install parser3.0 SP5 because I have a newer version omy laptop? What should I do? And why do we need SP5? Tahnks....

[michaeld]

For some reason, my civ4 will crash to the desktop. What I am doing is playing a custom game with myself and one other AI. AFter about 30 turns the program crashes to the desktop.

[Sabre2th]

Finally, a comprehensive fix thread....good work

Originally posted by snoopy369
1.7GB free space (Actually uses more like 4gb, I think)

It takes up less than 1.5gb for me... Where'd you get 4?

[Civfreak1970]

Michaeld the game has a pretty bad MEMORY LEAK which is causing your crashes to desktop!

Civfreak1970

[Tomas1931]

Increased Virtual memory to min 2.5 max 2.5 Playing on standard map so far no further crashes Also feel it a memory issue or the way the game is handling it As I have 1 gig RAM memory and a 256 nvidia Ge Force 5700 card

[OutFlanked]

Delete your autosave file in your My Docs directory for those whom deleting cache and getting to the game screen then getting booted. Do it Everytime.

1st thing it does at the main game screen startup is create or access? a autosave.

Works for me.

Standard map, low graphics, no sound, no movies, no autosave. Nearly all background programs stopped or not loaded. 1280X1024(Edit : Sorry that's 1024X768...oops). I will only update Net frame as a last resort.

On another subject, for those that the game runs out of the box, good for you and I hope your right that the game runs for 95% of users...but us 5% have got our asses kicked since the release.

I guess its just not better to respond either way sometimes.

Jim

EDIT : I can now load a saved game, and as long as I don't switch to another game...I don't need to delete the cache or the inital autosave.

[Agalla]

Hi...

I got CIV4 recommended requirements met:

ATHLON 2800+
512 MB
MSI FX 5500 128MB

but the game runs terribly slow!

I updated Nvidia drivers (downloaded 81.85 version) (in nvidia-> desktop managers -> about -> versions it says: 6.14.10.110005 in almost every file).

I´m running Civ in 1024 x 768, LOW graphics detail...

And it´s too slow, it´s unplayable...

Well, thanks in advance...

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by Civfreak1970
Michaeld the game has a pretty bad MEMORY LEAK which is causing your crashes to desktop!

Civfreak1970

Civfreak, please post a screenshot showing your task manager memory graph increasing as Civ4 leaks memory.

[Civfreak1970]

Sry been really busy testing this game! When I find time I will send a pic!

Im glad my fix has helped some of you! (Very Happy!)


Okay...I know forsure its a MEMORY LEAK!.... The game works great on all levels excepty Huge map 18 Civs where it will drop after 1700AD on Que because of all the units and world map showing. Yet on all maps when it gets into 1700+ it really starts to slow down alot but still runs fairly good on my machine yet I do feel bad for others who I would think are problably almost freezing do to this MEMORY LEAK!

Civfreak1970

PS..Please keep posting if my fix works for you!

[trancer72]

I just wish a fix would come out, I have tried everything on the list and nothing works. It all ends up with a black screen whether it be 10 minutes or 15 minutes of gameplay.

P4 2.0Ghz
1Gb RAM, 1.5 Gb Swap
nVIDIA GeForce Ti 4200

[brill]

Yeah, its gotta be, because when I first start playing, it runs fast between turns, but then it slows down progressively until I'm waiting 3-4 minutes between turns. And my computer isn't doing anything, no cd spin, no hard disk spin, nothing, just chilling. And every once in a while, the game crashes to the desktop, but I can just get right back to it. This is so stupid.

[Moonbars]

Anybody who thinks they have a memory leak, start task manager before you start civ, goto the performance tab, and look at the level of memory. then start civ, if it leaks memory you'll see the memory graph rise. You may also see the memory level sit higher after you exit (or the program crashes) civ

[DocMWood]

Let me see if I have this straight....

I have a computer that meets all the requirements on the box....

There's a list of 12 known problems.....

And now I'm going to have to go back to college to get a degree in computer technology so I can get the game to work? I'm a smart guy, and I'll grant that half the things listed are easy to do, but some of those seem a bit excessive to play a game I paid the company good money so I could, well, play it.

You've got to be kidding.

Why not patch the game?

[Civfreak1970]

Hey Doc!

I totally agree with you!

[trancer72]

After trying every possible fix suggested between here and civfanatics, nothing works. I know my card supports T&L and all other requirements are met.

But here is the ONLY error I get from any of the logs.

LSystem.log

building:Art/Structures/Buildings/Grocer/Grocer.nif does not contain a node called SHADOW. Its shadow, if present, will be corrupt!

building:Art/Structures/Buildings/Colosseum/Colosseum.nif does not contain a node called SHADOW. Its shadow, if present, will be corrupt!

building:Art/Structures/Buildings/BombShelters/BombShelters.nif does not contain a node called SHADOW. Its shadow, if present, will be corrupt!

Now there are only 2 files that list these items and they are under.

Sid's Civ 4\Assets\XML\Buildings\

And the 2 files are

CIV4CityLSystem.xml
CIV4PlotLSystem.xml

Now before anyone goes and blames my computer for the error, I am contantly dealing with this language and no other program run or created has had an error.

[Lord Diamond]

I have a Windows XP Media Center system with 2 GB of memory and a 3.2 Ghz Intel processor. I had installed Civ4 fine, but it wouldn't play properly because I had onboard video. I then installed an ATI card (all I had available) and started having the problems everyone else has listed. I decided to uninstall Civ4 and start from scratch. Now I can't even install the program! I even deleted all old Civ files and anything that mentioned Civ.

This is the error I get half way through the installation before the second disk is requested:

Feature Transfer Error

Feature: Default Feature
Component: Civ4 Component
File: D;\data2.cab
Error: Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)

Please point me in the right direction! This is driving me insane. If you can, I would love an email to ded127@aol.com. I will keep checking back here as well. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[Shadowlord]

Memory usage increasing over the course of the game doesn't necesssarily mean there's a memory leak; After all, the game has to keep track of progressively more cities, units, improvements, etc, as the game progresses.

Agalla: Try this: Download RivaTuner, install it, run it, and drop pixel shader to 1.4 and vertex shader to 1.1 - you can either do this for all games or just for Civilization 4. I'd do it for all games, since the FX series seems to have terribly bad performance with PS & VS 2.0. To do it for just civ 4 you'll have to use the 'add new profile' button (or 'scan registry for existing profiles' if you've already got a profile for it in the nvidia performance settings), but if you want to do it for all programs make sure you see "Global driver settings" instead of "Personal settings for [some game name here]".

To actually lock PS and VS at a lower level, click the button to the right of the "Customize..." text, then click the DirectX button (the second button from the left), then go to the Shaders tab. You should see two drop down boxes, one for pixel shaders and one for vertex shaders. Change pixel shaders to 'force 1.4', and vertex shaders to 'force 1.1', and then hit OK. It'll want you to reboot, and you should let it.

Some people suggested dropping pixel shaders to 1.1, but from what I read, the FX cards should do just as well with 1.4 as with 1.1. I'm not 100% certain of that, and it can't hurt to test the performance at the default, at 1.4, at 1.3, at 1.1, and with shaders disabled entirely. To test that really well, each time you test it you'd need to reboot the computer, wipe Civ's cache files, run Civ, and load a saved game, check performance at a city, from the globe view, at the ocean, in fog-of-war'd terrain, etc. Of course you'd need something to show you the framerate too, since just estimating it could be misleading.

P.S. In windows XP and probably 2000, you could make a .bat file to wipe the cache plus run Civ IV after wiping it. Once you've made this file (You could call it cleancache.bat and put it in your Civ IV folder), change the Civ IV shortcuts to point to your cleancache.bat instead of the Civilization4.exe. When you run the shortcuts, then, the cache will be cleared and then the game will run.

Here's what to put in cleancache.bat:

@echo off
cd "%appdata%\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4"
del cache /q /s /f
cd "C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4"
start Civilization4

Note: I don't have the game, but I'm pretty certain I got the paths right. Although the 2kgames Civ IV support site says the default path is "C:\Program Files\Sid Meier's Civilization 4", their screenshots contradict this by showing the installer (in an express install) putting it in "C:\...\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4" (the "..." almost certainly being Program Files). Their screenshot of the PAK extractor also shows it being inside a "Firaxis Games" folder. As for the appdata one, that one I'm 99% certain of. In any case, perhaps someone could make sure this actually works and slap me around a bit if it doesn't. :P

[Spocko]

Originally posted by Tomas1931
Increased Virtual memory to min 2.5 max 2.5 Playing on standard map so far no further crashes Also feel it a memory issue or the way the game is handling it As I have 1 gig RAM memory and a 256 nvidia Ge Force 5700 card

I was disappointed to have sluggish game performance at late stage of the game (already won Diplo victory), and I would leave the game to see a yellow triangle complaining about virtual memory is low.

I too increased memory to min 1920 max 1920 (768mb RAM; virtual memory was only 384mb!), updated my ATI video drivers (Radeon 9200 - drivers were old) and my SoundBlaster Audigy drivers (old drivers) - result: CIV4 SCREAMS!

I built a 50million population at Chieftain level, 8 other Civs, and the time I wait between moves is now only about 10 seconds, and on my turn, the game responds as crisply as it did in the early stages of growth.

I can't wait until everyone gets to share my Civ4 experience

[somebloke]

I too initially had the rendering problems and couldn't play the game at all.
I looked at my graphics card settings and played with the hardware acceleration and then the game worked fine. That was on my P3-800 with ATi graphics card.
I then tried it on my other computer, AMD-1200 with GeForce2 graphics card and haven't had a problem playing it.

But I do have a problem with one of the in game features that I haven't seen anyone else with.
When i select a settler as my active unit, its supposed to show what resources each tile produces on the map. Unfortunately it shows that almost every tile on the map produces 2 food, whether its a plain or hill (except mountains and desert) although when i pass my cursor over each tile, the tool tip will give me the correct resource ouput for the tile. This also happens when I'm in the city view and/or when I toggle yield dispaly. This is just a visual thing, my city still appears to be using the resources correctly.

Anyone else with this problem?

[Enough]

Originally posted by Lord Diamond
I have a Windows XP Media Center system with 2 GB of memory and a 3.2 Ghz Intel processor. I had installed Civ4 fine, but it wouldn't play properly because I had onboard video. I then installed an ATI card (all I had available) and started having the problems everyone else has listed. I decided to uninstall Civ4 and start from scratch. Now I can't even install the program! I even deleted all old Civ files and anything that mentioned Civ.

This is the error I get half way through the installation before the second disk is requested:

Feature Transfer Error

Feature: Default Feature
Component: Civ4 Component
File: D;\data2.cab
Error: Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)

Please point me in the right direction! This is driving me insane. If you can, I would love an email to ded127@aol.com. I will keep checking back here as well. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

I had the exact same install error and I found this to work perfectly:

1. Use MSCONFIG to close background applications

Before starting the installation go on the desktop to START/RUN and type in "msconfig". When the menu appears, click on the GENERAL tab, if it is not already at the front. Under STARTUP SELECTION, select SELECTIVE STARTUP, and UNCHECK the selection LOAD STARTUP ITEMS. Click APPLY and then OK, and reboot the system and retry the installation.

At any time, you can always go back into the MSCONFIG menu to change back to NORMAL STARTUP, or SELECTIVE STARTUP and replace the checkmark next to LOAD STARTUP ITEMS.