Possible Fixes for "Failed to Initialize Renderer" Startup Error

[Salatir]

For those that ordered from Gamestop, there might be good news, though it might be on an individual basis. My store representative was more than understanding about my frustration and refunded my money without a problem, despite a general "no refund if opened" policy. Suffice it to say, now that I have taken this source of bother out of my hands, I no longer have to worry about it. For those folks that, like me, lack the patience to wait for this fix and would rather try again later, I encourage you to talk to your store's reps, explain the unique situation to them (including weblinks, just to give them an indicator that you're not making things up) and state that no new copy of the game is going to work for you until/if the problem is fixed. I'd wager that there's some discretion allowed these folks that could be exercised for their consumers.

Now, I no longer have to worry about this.

Problem solved, at least for me.

[McKeu]

Well now...
I got a Sapphire radeon 9600 XT, game works with me, BUT... the ingame videos (like wonders and other leaders in diplomatic screen) only show correctly in about 10% of all cases. Most of the time the video window stays black. I can continue the Game without probs though. Have Cata 5.10, card drivers 8.18 and the civ4 directx installed. Still ingame videos mess up completely without crashing the game.

[Solver]

And you post about having returned a copy just after there's an apparently working fix out .

[codechino]

Originally posted by Solver
And you post about having returned a copy just after there's an apparently working fix out .

edit: woah, missed that link

[JimmyTango]

Originally posted by Salatir
For those that ordered from Gamestop, there might be good news, though it might be on an individual basis. My store representative was more than understanding about my frustration and refunded my money without a problem, despite a general "no refund if opened" policy. Suffice it to say, now that I have taken this source of bother out of my hands, I no longer have to worry about it. For those folks that, like me, lack the patience to wait for this fix and would rather try again later, I encourage you to talk to your store's reps, explain the unique situation to them (including weblinks, just to give them an indicator that you're not making things up) and state that no new copy of the game is going to work for you until/if the problem is fixed. I'd wager that there's some discretion allowed these folks that could be exercised for their consumers.

Now, I no longer have to worry about this.

Problem solved, at least for me.

Yes, the problem is solved. For those patient enough to WAIT A DAY.

[Gallant]

Yeah, does anybody have a link for that fix?

I'll give them all 8 empty coke cans that I managed to produce in the last 48 hours, which they may take in for recycling refunds.

[Gallant]

Sorry, found it.. and for everyone else...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140859

[didz]

FIX FOUND

The problem has NOTHING to do with the drivers

refer to this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=140859

[Simpleton]

Originally posted by ZanThrax


Which one? They were both rude when I was there. You must have had a preorder in for it. I was told that the preorder I placed was for the regular edition, not the CE & that they only had 9 copies for the 10 CE preorders anyhow. Entire conversation was with a "get bent and die, it's not our problem that we screwed you over" attitude. Now it seems that no one has the regular edition in Edmonton anywhere until "maybe" Friday. So not only no good manual & tech tree, but I can't even get the regular manual either.

Both grumpy? How can that be??? The girl I bought the game from must have sucked all the cheer and life out of the other one. That girl is absolutely horrid!!! I wish EB had secret shoppers. Would I ever like to write a report on her!


She basically told me the same thing about the CE. I didn't preorder but I had reserved a copy a few days before it came out. I got that final (ninth) copy. Of course, it's all for naught as I can't play the bloody thing due to that friggin rendering error!!!!!

[PLATO]

Re: Possible Fix for ATi Card Issues

Originally posted by Trip
1. Go to add/remove programs and uninstall the listing titled ‘ATI Graphics Driver’

I do not show a graphics driver in "add/remove" I show a "Display driver" version 8.04-040717a-017646C-ATI

Same thing?

[Jon Shafer]

Yes, that appears to be correct.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by ERLoft
Hmm, as no one seems to be having issues with X850 XT PE cards, maybe it's time to consider the upgrades. BF2 has been crying out for that upgrade for a while now...

BTW, problem #1 on the Support Line was the tech tree en francais.

Actually I did have a problem with the X850 XT PE, but I fixed it.

[OutFlanked]

Originally posted by JimmyTango
Yes, the problem is solved. For those patient enough to WAIT A DAY.

Yeah, good for you that the fix worked.

Bad for me that it didn't.

Nice Hubris

[tezster]

I only picked up the game yesterday, and having read of all the problems here just about expected the game not to run on my first try. But fortunately I didn't run into any problems at all. I have an ATI 9500 Pro video card. No rendering errors or small graphical glitches or lock-ups or reboots.

In fact, had I not read any messages in this forum, I would've assumed that there were absolutely no problems with the game whatsoever.

This is only after about 4 hours of gameplay; hopefully the next 40+ hours I'll play over the weekend will go just as smoothly

[Targonis]

Here is an idea to help isolate the source of the problems. For myself, I am running an ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128 meg(built by ATI) card, with 1 gig of system memory, and using the sound built into my motherboard.

First, in your system(s), do you have one DIMM module for your memory, or do you have two or more? I've seen problems in the past with some games(EverQuest had this problem for a while) where people would crash to desktop, but removing one memory module would work fine.

How large is your AGP apature? For those with PCI Express, there should be a similar setting to tell the BIOS how much real system memory is available to the video card. For many AGP motherboards, setting this value to the lowest setting will turn off the feature which will help diagnose the problem.

Check if there are motherboard or chipset driver updates available. Make sure you have the latest AGP and/or PCI Express drivers installed since this CAN make a difference in games.

For drivers, I have the latest Catalyst drivers installed with Catalyst Control Center, NOT the control panel set. This means I have the .NET framework 1.1 installed with all the idiotic little patches needed(because Microsoft can't just replace the older 1.1 package with an updated one that has the fixes included).

I know this won't help those with laptops, but for those with desktop computers, the PCI slot that is on the end as far from the AGP slot as possible tends to share an IRQ with the video card, and this can cause MINOR conflicts with the video card. As a result, if you have a PCI modem card or sound card in that slot, it might be a part of the problem.

For those with a Creative Labs sound card and also have the display problems, try removing the sound card from your system to help diagnose if it's a part of the problem. Creative Labs is KNOWN for having drivers that cause problems. It took them over a year after Windows XP came out to provide support for the SB Live cards which they COMPLETELY stopped supporting for that one year.

Back to the video side of things, check your settings. Make sure your desktop resolution matches your game settings for video. If you run the game at 1024x768 with 32 bit color, make sure your desktop is set to that same resolution. Also, in the drivers, make sure EVERYTHING is set to application preference. Do NOT try to force anti aliasing. To verify that the listed settings are the real ones, change the setting, apply the change, then change the setting back to application preference. I always go max quality, but customize to application preference.

It's possible that the people who are having problems are running into the drivers trying to force a setting that just doesn't work with the game.

I hope these ideas help some of you. I'll check back later...