Logon as Administrator

[Rotten999]

I successfully installed Civ4 but I can't run it. I'm getting this message about how I have to logon with administrator priviledges to run the program. The problem is I already am logged in on an administrator account and I checked the "any user" box during installation. I tried to create an alternate account but that didn't help either and the program won't let me make any changes on "run as..." without the same error message popping up.

Any help would be appreciated.

[DaveOath]

Same problem here

[BleckLord]

When I made a seperate account for the game I had a problem, the game gave me the old 'renderer error'.

I added Administrator as the account's user group (from 'Power User'), and the game executed fine. Still crashed to the desktop randomly though.

[DaveOath]

I found a solution:

Put the first disc for the game into your cd drive.
Open my computer
Right click on the cd and select browse or explore
Locate the secdrv.sys file, right click on it and select copy
Browse into the hard drive that has windows installed
Open the windows folder
Open the system32 folder
Open the drivers folder
Go to the edit menu and paste the file into this folder

[tandleheart]

Wow... that really [self-censored]! Game software should really be run as non-privileged users. They are typically very complex and error-prone, and their development cycles are such that they barely get tested. There's enough problems getting the game to work... what do you think the chances are that the developers had the chance to "harden" the code? Are there buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the multiplayer networking code? I can understand elevated privileges for installing the game, but not for running one.

This is yet another reason why copy protection is a BAD, bad idea. It doesn't really prevent or reduce piracy (anyone who wants a crack can probably get one, or knows someone with the technical knowledge to get one). It forces you to keep the CD in the drive, or create a virtual drive (which circumvents the copy protection mechanism anyhow) to overcome the inconvenience of running multiple applications on your machine. It also forces you to run the game with elevated privileges, which weakens the security of your own machine. It makes legal backups difficult to create, especially one that you want to take on the road with you while keeping the original safe and secure at home. And in the past (for example, Morrowind), it has caused severe game performance issues.

Cheers!

P.S. This post should not be taken to support piracy. If you find something useful or entertaining, then you should pay to use it. However, on a concluding note, the argument that copy protection is caused by pirates doesn't hold much water either. Copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) schemes would have come around regardless of piracy-- its because these technologies allow the supplier to control the market much more effectively than today. For example, publishers can charge monopoly rents and change what you currently "own" to more like a "rent". They can charge you using any pay structure you "agree" to, including charging you multiple times per use. In order to get such schemes in place, there has to be technical means to enforce those onerous restrictions. Hence, copy protection and DRM. While piracy is aconvenient moral justification which appeals to the uninformed, the truth is copy protection and DRM have more to do with profit maximization and control. This control is effected by circumventing the First Sale and Fair Use doctrines of copyright law.

[Rotten999]

Thanks DaveOath, now it's working fine.