Radeon 9600 Ingame errors

[McKeu]

Heya folks,

got some problems with the European Version of Civ 4:

Installation went fine and when I start the Game i get NO error messages, intro is running flawless but during game i got some trouble with the videos (wonders, civ leaders, etc). Sometimes the videos work but most of the time the window in which the sequence is meant to be played stays black. Game does not crash or anything and i can continue the game without problems. Maybe someone has an idea...

DirectX version is 9.0c (4.09...), all tests succesful
ATI driver version 6.14...
Windows XP pro on an Athlon XP 3000+

[adv_dp_fan]

I have the same issue, though sometimes the movie isn't black but is just random garbage. Game still plays fine with no other issues. Sometimes I get the movie, sometimes I don't.

ATI 9600 XT with latest driver
Windows XP Pro on dual Athlon MP 2400+

[McKeu]

yeah, very seldom the videos don't stay black but show a bunch of differently colored mess, forgot to mention that...

[McKeu]

I already tried to reinstall catalyst 5.10 and now my driver version reads 8.18, didn't solve the problem though. Then I reinstalled directX afterwards, didn't change anything either...
So now things are getting weird. Anybody got an idea how to get the ingame videos working correctly?

[McKeu]

I just tried the fix for the "renderer error" and gotta say it doesn't fix the problem WE have.

[grov]

Are the videos WMV format? If so, try disabling the WMV acceleration in the ATI Catalyst drivers (Options tab of the advanced properties). I've no idea if this will make any difference but I've read elswhere that the WMV acceleration causes problems.

I'd love to know if ths makes any difference or not ready for when my copy arrives...

Ian

[da raiders]

this is the exact problem i am having. for me it's random pixels & choppy music.

any help would be appreciated.

[geneshifter]

I posted about this on another post, but I'll mention it again here; I had similar problems with Pirates2 and I finally fixed it by deleting the .dll file for my sound card and replacing with a generic sound .dll file from the windows directory and it fixed the problem. I have an old Aureal3D card, but it still works great. I think my file was called A3D.dll. BTW, I have Athlon 2000+, 768MB Ram and ATI9550 and Civ4 runs flawlessly. I would suggest you guys start looking at your sound cards. I know it sounds weird, but it worked for me and maybe it'll help you too.

[da raiders]

i have an intel driver. i downloaded the first 1 & it works great!!

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=1764&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Home+Edition&lang=eng&strOSs=45&submit=Go%21

[GoodRevrnd]

I have similar problem. Sometimes the video is all garbled (sound is fine as far as i remember), sometimes it causes my system to hard lock, and most of the time it causes the ATI vpu recover to go off. After it minimizes the game and I close the vpu recover though, the video is playing flawlessly and the game functions fine until the next diplomacy/wonder screen. I could *almost* live with this temporarily except for the 20-40% of the time it hard locks my sys.

ATI 9700Pro, new drivers, new d3d files, was never effected by the renderer bug.
Intel 2.26B on Abit IC7

[McKeu]

Originally posted by geneshifter
I posted about this on another post, but I'll mention it again here; I had similar problems with Pirates2 and I finally fixed it by deleting the .dll file for my sound card and replacing with a generic sound .dll file from the windows directory and it fixed the problem. I have an old Aureal3D card, but it still works great. I think my file was called A3D.dll. BTW, I have Athlon 2000+, 768MB Ram and ATI9550 and Civ4 runs flawlessly. I would suggest you guys start looking at your sound cards. I know it sounds weird, but it worked for me and maybe it'll help you too.

I am curious whether it would work, but I'm definitely not going to delete my sound drivers and replace them ^^. But maybe if theres no other solution i will try this last. I thought about the soundcard being the cause for this trouble but couldn't figure out a good solution yet. Funny thing is: Why do sometimes videos work (seems random) and sometimes not? One round I get a black animation window while talking to Ghandi for example and next round I can see his animation!?

[McKeu]

Originally posted by grov
Are the videos WMV format? If so, try disabling the WMV acceleration in the ATI Catalyst drivers (Options tab of the advanced properties). I've no idea if this will make any difference but I've read elswhere that the WMV acceleration causes problems.

I'd love to know if ths makes any difference or not ready for when my copy arrives...

Ian

Thanx for the idea, Ian, but I tried it out and would not recommend this. After disabling wmv-acceleration and starting civ4 I got an ATI error message saying it reset my graphic card due to major errors ^^. Game finished loading then and it didn't change anything with the videos ingame. Still same errors.