Crash to Desktop: Support and Debug

[jdchambe]

2.8 GHz P4, 2GB RAM
256MB Radeon X800

I've been playing this game since the day it was released. I've played some 20 games to completion already. Not once in those 20 games did I have a single CTD problem!!

Yesterday, the game crashed to desktop during the closing end-game sequence (it was playing the space race victory video). It wasn't the first time I've achieved a space race victory. In fact, it was the 4th!

Now, the game has crashed to the desktop during regular play twice today already.

I have not installed anything on this computer since I started playing this game. In fact, I haven't used this computer for anything other than to play civ 4.

I hope this is an unlucky coincidence and not a pattern. But in anycase, that is my experience with crashes to the desktop.

[seebs]

Have you experimented with, for instance, tilted-axis maps, or other things like that? I had a lot of crashes on a map with X and Y wraparound, and I haven't had a crash in a couple hundred turns on a map with no wraparound at all.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by jdchambe
2.8 GHz P4, 2GB RAM
256MB Radeon X800

I've been playing this game since the day it was released. I've played some 20 games to completion already. Not once in those 20 games did I have a single CTD problem!!

Yesterday, the game crashed to desktop during the closing end-game sequence (it was playing the space race victory video). It wasn't the first time I've achieved a space race victory. In fact, it was the 4th!

Now, the game has crashed to the desktop during regular play twice today already.

I have not installed anything on this computer since I started playing this game. In fact, I haven't used this computer for anything other than to play civ 4.

I hope this is an unlucky coincidence and not a pattern. But in anycase, that is my experience with crashes to the desktop.

Do you have XP and does it automatically update?

[Fulby]

Hi,

AthlonXP 3200+
1GB RAM
ATI 9800Pro 128MB RAM
Nvidia nForce sound
WinXP Pro SP1

DX9.0c from Civ4 install
ATI Catalyst 5.10 then 4.10

I had CTDs on a late game (1900s) huge world every 2-3 turns, and it would occasionally reset the PC. Don't know is anyone else had these, a blue screen would sometimes appear but with no text and then the PC would reset (my startup and recovery settings are NOT set to automatically reset btw).

I found clearing the cache helped, what seems to have really solved it is going from Catalyst 5.10 to 4.10. After this I haven't had a crash in 30+ late game turns.

Hope this helps,

Fulby

[Valari]

Hi all, i'm new here, and i dont know much about computer crashes, will be as straightforward as i can, i dont know many of the terms you guys are using.

System: 1.8 pentium 4
512 DDR
128 ATI 9600 Pro (downloaded latest catalys drivers from ati website
Soundblaster Live

My Problem:

Every game that I have started (note: all games have been on either tiny, small, or standard maps) after anywhere from 1 to no more than 30 turns, the game just simply quits and sends me to the desk top.

I get no error messages, no werid visuals, just the game closes and sends me to the desk top.

Oh and I have tried doing the UNPAK of the file in assets, and deleting the cache, it has had 0 effect, same thing happens nothing different.

Is it the game, or could it be my system? Could it be bad ram CPU screwed up? video card screwed?
any suggestions would be great, I ahve enjoyed all the civ games, and this is just lame, it is unplayable right now

[CivNonFreak]

Originally posted by Valari
Hi all, i'm new here, and i dont know much about computer crashes, will be as straightforward as i can, i dont know many of the terms you guys are using.

System: 1.8 pentium 4
512 DDR
128 ATI 9600 Pro (downloaded latest catalys drivers from ati website
Soundblaster Live

My Problem:

Every game that I have started (note: all games have been on either tiny, small, or standard maps) after anywhere from 1 to no more than 30 turns, the game just simply quits and sends me to the desk top.

I get no error messages, no werid visuals, just the game closes and sends me to the desk top.

Oh and I have tried doing the UNPAK of the file in assets, and deleting the cache, it has had 0 effect, same thing happens nothing different.

Is it the game, or could it be my system? Could it be bad ram CPU screwed up? video card screwed?
any suggestions would be great, I ahve enjoyed all the civ games, and this is just lame, it is unplayable right now

Well I believe the situation you have is related to the ATI cards (there are a number of threads on how to get the best results from these under the game as it is currently). Don;t get me wrong, there are plenty of issues that arn't related to the video but most of those seem to me to be small.

I had CTDs also, but only late in the game. That situation has solved itself for me by going to the GeForce 71.89 video drivers and reinstalling Directx from the game CD. Since then my game is fine except for the sound stuttering in movies. If you have gotten the latest drivers and firmware for your Motherboard, video and sound card, de-fragged the drive, expanded your virtual RAM to 2 or 3 GB (static, don't allow windows to resize at will), patched your OS and THEN reinstalled the game and DirectX, you will get close to the best you can get pre-patch. There are some threads, as I said, for how to get the ATI problems resolved (Omega drivers are one solution I saw) but the above is the bulk of the 'solutions' proffered by the community. I was just fortunate that my last 'big game' all but required a GeForce card and I had one, thus bypassing the majority of video issues (with the right driver anyway) that are crippling game play.

Good luck!

[coolbloke1324]

Crash to Desktop in multiplayer

GeForce 6800 GT
P4 3.2
2GB Ram
1.2 TB HD space
WinXp Pro SP2
Using Wired LAN between all 4 comps of differing spec

Crashes to desktop everytime we try to end go on a saved multiplayer game we had going.

So we reload, get back in and try to end go, and we all crash back to desktop again!

Also notice that one of our quite nice spec laptops (p4 3.2, 512 ram, 80gb hd winxp pro sp2, geforce go 5600) takes almost 10 minutes to connect to our game!!

This game is excellent, probably the best civ ever created, just a shame we can't actually play it!

Single player seems to run without incident.

Anyone else had multiplayer problems?

[dreamwalker]

CTD, Freeze, Restarts

So my config:

Athlon XP 2000+
ASUS A7V600
1 GB RAM
Sapphire ATI RAdeon 9600 Pro Advantage Edition 128 RAM
1 x DVD ROM
1 X DVD RW
1 X PCTV Pro
1 X SB Live

.....

Hmmm what I noticed is very interesting. I enabled logs and it is not important what world size I try to play, there are always error logs. In case of standard and huge maps, the system makes CTD or restart or freezes after few turns.
So I changed the world size to small and I was able to play the game till 1620 AD without problems. After this year I had a lot of construction and graphics on the map and it crashed to desktop. There is in my opinion a relation between the CTD and memory, because it seems that as the game needs more memory in later stages or at the begining when calculating huge maps it crashes.

I reinstalled to OMega drivers also DNA Ati drivers,... has no influence on the crashes.
Also unpacking helped not much.

Maybe I should upgrade to 2 - 3 GB of memory....

I am very disappointed that the game is not working, cause I soent my 80 USD to get it from USA to Slovakia and it looks that the game has so many defects. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU BUY A CAR WHICH WILL HAVE ENGINE THAT WILL SIMPLY STOP RANDOMLY WITHOUT REASON?

It's a shame that SId Meier has used his name for this. Devastating image of him and of CIV

[CivNonFreak]

Re: CTD, Freeze, Restarts

Originally posted by dreamwalker

Maybe I should upgrade to 2 - 3 GB of memory....

I am very disappointed that the game is not working, cause I soent my 80 USD to get it from USA to Slovakia and it looks that the game has so many defects. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU BUY A CAR WHICH WILL HAVE ENGINE THAT WILL SIMPLY STOP RANDOMLY WITHOUT REASON?

It's a shame that SId Meier has used his name for this. Devastating image of him and of CIV

Well I am running with:

DFI NFII400-AL
Athlon Xp 2800+
1 GB RAM
GeForce 5200, 128 MB RAM
Nforce sound (integrated)
2 GB of Swap File

The only thing thats fails to work still is the stuttering movies. Though there are some gameplay issues I have seen (incorrectly counting the votes in the UN for one).

I'm no mouthpiece for CIV or Sid, but I think your comments are a little unfair. Granted it did not work 100% for all players, it worked very well for the majority. Assuming they come out with a patch soon, I'm more then good with that... compared to some games its a great track record. And if it was a car I'd paid $80 for and they could fix it remotely for no charge, I'd be pretty happy. If they never fixed it, I'd be very pissed.

Its impossible to test for all things and configs. Anyone who says you can is lying. Should they have done a better job on testing one of the two big families of gaming video cards...? based on these forums, it sure looks that way. On the other hand, I wonder what percenatge of people complaining about the game not working also complained that it was taking too long to go gold?

I learned from MS... never adopt a package (OS, Application or game) until the first patch is released. And if you do, don't b!tch too loud about it until the patch comes out. Maybe everything SHOULD be perfect when it's released, but when you are dealing with 100,000s of lines of code, human error has a million ways (at least) to express itself.

[jdchambe]

Originally posted by SpencerH


Do you have XP and does it automatically update?

yes, i have xp. no, it does not automatically update. I don't trust microsoft that much.

the problem went away actually after rebooting the machine a second time. I decided to try rebooting the machine one more time, and I haven't had another crash-to-desktop since that hard reboot.

[jdchambe]

as for what is causing these CTDs: it does appear to be memory related (CTDs usually are memory related after all, so that isn't too huge a leap to make...)

I've a little more experience with this because, though my game doesn't have many problems with CTD's, my friend's crashes with CTD's usually one or two times every hour!

On two instances, the game crashed and went to a blue screen instead of the desktop. Those blue screens listed a complaint about attempts to access memory addresses that were very close to, but not exactly equal to zero. That strongly smells like a bad pointer dereference to me.

but beyond that I don't know. I'm guessing it is related to some combination of the video card and the game's memory usage (though I'm wondering if it might be an issue with the sound card also...). I've told my friend to update drivers and check for rogue processes running in the back ground on his machine. He's done all that and the game still crashes frequently.



As for the video stuttering: that happens on my machine all the time. The videos in the early game (even on a large map) don't stutter, but by the time I get to the end-game, the videos are stuttering frequently no matter how small my map is. Could that be an indication of a memory leak I wonder?

bah. I have no idea. Does suck to crash multiple times each hour though. that is for sure.

[Aquitaine]

I have two machines with Civ4, a desktop and a laptop, and experience slightly different issues with each. Specs first:

Desktop:

AMD 4400+ x2 on an Asus A8N-SLI Motherboard
ATI x700 Pro PCI-e card (to be replaced today with a GeForce 6800 GS) - 256M RAM
1G OCZ Enhanced-Latency DDR-400 RAM
Windows XP SP2 w/all Updates
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum

Laptop:

Dell Inspiron 8600 circa October 2004 - Pentium M 1.6 GHz w/ 1G RAM
ATI 9600 Mobility Turbo Pro w/128M RAM
SigmaTel Onboard Audio
Windows XP SP2 w/all updates

On the desktop, it -very- rarely crashes to the desktop -- maybe twice in the course of a single-player game.

On the laptop, it hard-locks the computer on average of once an hour. I've tried Omega drivers, 5.9, 5.10, and 5.11 Catalyst drivers. Got the 4.10 Catalysts but it seems like they pre-date the card in the laptop as they don't detect it as a supported card. Just installed the Dell-specific drivers for it to see if that makes a difference but I'm not holding my breath.

It -seems- to be the case that setting the graphics to 'medium' increased the time before it locks up.

It's not heat-related; the laptop gets fairly warm when doing something taxing (like Rome: TW or HL2) but it barely warms up at all doing Civ4.

[dreamwalker]

Re: Re: CTD, Freeze, Restarts

Originally posted by CivNonFreak


Well I am running with:

DFI NFII400-AL
Athlon Xp 2800+
1 GB RAM
GeForce 5200, 128 MB RAM
Nforce sound (integrated)
2 GB of Swap File

The only thing thats fails to work still is the stuttering movies. Though there are some gameplay issues I have seen (incorrectly counting the votes in the UN for one).

I'm no mouthpiece for CIV or Sid, but I think your comments are a little unfair. Granted it did not work 100% for all players, it worked very well for the majority. Assuming they come out with a patch soon, I'm more then good with that... compared to some games its a great track record. And if it was a car I'd paid $80 for and they could fix it remotely for no charge, I'd be pretty happy. If they never fixed it, I'd be very pissed.

Its impossible to test for all things and configs. Anyone who says you can is lying. Should they have done a better job on testing one of the two big families of gaming video cards...? based on these forums, it sure looks that way. On the other hand, I wonder what percenatge of people complaining about the game not working also complained that it was taking too long to go gold?

I learned from MS... never adopt a package (OS, Application or game) until the first patch is released. And if you do, don't b!tch too loud about it until the patch comes out. Maybe everything SHOULD be perfect when it's released, but when you are dealing with 100,000s of lines of code, human error has a million ways (at least) to express itself.

[dreamwalker]

Re: Re: CTD, Freeze, Restarts

[QUOTE] Originally posted by CivNonFreak


I'm no mouthpiece for CIV or Sid, but I think your comments are a little unfair. Granted it did not work 100% for all players, it worked very well for the majority. Assuming they come out with a patch soon, I'm more then good with that...

Its impossible to test for all things and configs. Anyone who says you can is lying. Should they have done a better job on testing one of the two big families of gaming video cards...? based on these forums, it sure looks that way. On the other hand, I wonder what percenatge of people complaining about the game not working also complained that it was taking too long to go gold?

YES I AM REALLY UPSET WITH THIS CAUSE THERE ARE MUCH MORE COMPLICATED GAMES WITH 3D ENGINES, WHICH RUNS WELL. I DON'T THINK THAT THESE COMPLAINING PEOPLE ARE ONLY THE FEW, IT LOOKS LIKE IT A BIT MORE. I HAD MANY GAMES WHICH ALSO REQUIRED PATCH, BUT THEY RUN WITHOUT PROBLEM ALSO WITHOUT PATCH. AND WHERE IS WRITTEN THAT THE PATCH IS GOING TO BE RELEASED? THERE IS NO EVIDENCE, NO MESSAGE FROM DEVELOPERS THAT "WE ARE WORKING ON IT". ALSO CONSIDER WHY THE CIV4 IS NOT SOLD IN HERE IN EUROPE. IT HAD TO BE ALREADY IN STORES BUT IT IS NOT, IT LOOKS LIKE THAT THEY STOPPED DISTRIBUTION IN SOME COUNTRIES IN EUROPE, WHY?

[sidnitz]

Well, I just put together my new machine this weekend and Civ IV managed to consistently crash to the desktop within the first 15-20 turns of 3 different games (large map, epic speed, 7 AI controlled civs) before I got the "Renderer failed to initialize" error relaunching and gave up entirely. Tried running in both SLI and single card mode, with no affinity set, & w/ affinity set to core 1 or 2, all w/ same dismal results.

F.E.A.R., Doom3, Quake 4, X-Men Legends 2, and bundled games all run w/o issue on maxed settings (same as my P4 machine on lower settings).

Where's this patch that was supposed to be out last week?

New Machine Specs:

AMD 64 x2 4400+
Asus A8N SLI Premium BIOS Rev 1009
2 x 1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
2 x Asus EN7800GTX PCI-e 256MB
3 x WD Raptor 74GB SATA 150 in RAID5
8 channel Realtek AC '97
Enermax EG851AX-VH 660w EPS Power Supply
WinXP Pro SP2 w/ all critical updates
3 GB static page file
NVidia nForce v6.66 & Forceware 78.01