It still won't run

[chefhermes]

I cannot get Civ 4 to work. I have tried every posted solution, with the exception of reinstalling Windows ( which I will NOT do! )

I initially had the "Renderer" error. So, I followed the instrutions on the Civ4 site, to the letter. That took care of that error. Now, when I try to run, it switches screen size a couple of times, and then just drops me back to the desktop. The only error that I get in my logs is "RESMGR: Scene file Art/Terrain/Lights/UnitLight.nif failed to load. Reason: (code:1) Cannot open file." in RESMGR.log. The init log looks like this:

[1338.805] DBG: FILE Cat Init
[1339.856] DBG: NOT Using XML cache, failed to find crc.dat file
[1339.856] DBG: Game Init
[1339.856] DBG: Multiplayer Init
[1339.986] DBG: Audio Init
[1341.709] DBG: ArtFileMgr Init
[1341.719] DBG: Python Init
[1352.404] VERSION: CIV Version: 0
[1352.404] VERSION: Save Version: 100
[1352.404] DBG: Input Init
[1352.404] DBG: Engine Init
[1355.459] DBG: Engine: Axis Engine Initialized
[1355.459] DBG: Engine: Scene Graph Initialized
[1355.649] DBG: Engine: Shaders Initialized
[1355.689] DBG: Engine: Scene Lights Initialized

It seems pretty clear that the problem is with the file "UnitLight.nif"
I am running XP with SP 2, AMD 1.10 GHz, 768 megs of Ram, I have a Radeon 9600 that is less than a year old. I have: updated XML, updated DX SDK with the october patch from MSft, updated sound drivers, tried both ATI's most recent drivers and Omega's ATI drivers. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Civ five times. Nothing has worked. Can anyone offer anything further to try? ( short of reinstalling XP, I shouldn't have to do that )

chefhermes

[O_o]

I'm having the same exact problem. I checked, and there is no "Art/Terrain/Lights/" directory (let alone UnitLight.nif), which is probably causing the problem.

[chefhermes]

Double check again, path\Civ4\Assets\Art\art, that's what I have. O_o, did you use the unpack utility?

[O_o]

Yeah, I get as far as \Terrain\, but there is no Lights folder in that.

[O_o]

Hmm... I managed to fix it by putting Art0.FPK back into the Assets folder

[chefhermes]

I tried another weird little thing... Because it keeps telling me theres a problem with "Art/Terrain/Lights/UnitLight.nif failed to load", I took a close look at that file. All the files in that directory are just 1kb. Could it be that they didn't unpak correctly?

So, I did a test. I ran the unpak utility, to pak the /art directory. Final results: test.FPK = 326,832 kilobytes. art0.FPK = 334,188 kb. Did it just pak incorrectly? Is there more in art0.FPK that ends up going elsewhere, in another directory? Or, did it unpak incorrectly, and not dump out everything it should have? Any ideas?

chefhermes