Submit your crash reports!

[Zydor]

There is a Major Memory issue in Civ IV. A fix has been produced that really does work. The thread is sprinting towards 32,000 hits at the time of this post - all in 4 Days!

Its not a dubious amateur hack. If you get CTDs - slow down - reboots - massive save files etc - go now to this thread, its put Firaxis to shame

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146309

Regards
Zy

[Tommar]

Originally posted by fittstim
Upgrading won't always solve your problem. I just had a CTD about 40 seconds after I loaded my game from last night (which also ended with a "modified" CTD (one that also changed my display parameters to 4-bit color and 480X600 resolution).

My computer is a P4 3.4 GHz, 1GB RAM with a GeForce 6800 graphics card with 256 MB memory. Should work fine.

Otherwise, I'm not experiencing long delays during the computer's turn. The only problem (aside from the many crashes) is the several minute wait I must endure when I load a game (exiting the game takes but a second or two).

The crash you described sounds like video driver. Even if you have the latest driver, you might have to reinstall it. I believe this game automatically upgrades DirectX (which annoys the heck out of me, but I might be confusing this with another game recently installed - it annoys me because I've run into games before that aren't compatible with the latest DirectX version, and even if this one won't run without the latest version, I might prefer to play the other game.) Often when DirectX is upgraded, video and sound drivers need to be upgraded or reinstalled. Or maybe it's vice versa.

Processor/memory is definitely my problem. When I went back back and tried to reload the game from autosave, I found that the last autosave was like a 1000 bytes or so, compared to several hundred KB for the last few saves, i.e., the game crashed during an autosave. It dawned on me that autosave might be increasing my delays in big games (as well as wonder movies). I couldn't find a way to turn off autosave or movies through the user interface. Maybe there's a way to do that through an *.ini or something.

Edited note: I don't think I SHOULD have a problem with processor/video memory, but rather, that this game has a bug that requires more of it than it really should.

[Russian_King]

hmm the only crashes i have are freezes. i think ive had one CTD out of nowhere.
Freezes usually come from entering a advisor screen while theres stuff happening or something.. i get them heaps when im playing MP and end my turn, look at top 5 cities and the others all end theirs. the freeze still allows me to move my mouse tho. but i have to reset anyway

[fittstim]

Originally posted by Tommar


The crash you described sounds like video driver. Even if you have the latest driver, you might have to reinstall it. I believe this game automatically upgrades DirectX (which annoys the heck out of me, but I might be confusing this with another game recently installed - it annoys me because I've run into games before that aren't compatible with the latest DirectX version, and even if this one won't run without the latest version, I might prefer to play the other game.) Often when DirectX is upgraded, video and sound drivers need to be upgraded or reinstalled. Or maybe it's vice versa.

Processor/memory is definitely my problem. When I went back back and tried to reload the game from autosave, I found that the last autosave was like a 1000 bytes or so, compared to several hundred KB for the last few saves, i.e., the game crashed during an autosave. It dawned on me that autosave might be increasing my delays in big games (as well as wonder movies). I couldn't find a way to turn off autosave or movies through the user interface. Maybe there's a way to do that through an *.ini or something.

Edited note: I don't think I SHOULD have a problem with processor/video memory, but rather, that this game has a bug that requires more of it than it really should.

You know what Tommar?...you're absolutely correct. Only the latest NVidia driver (81.95) allows DirectX9.0c compatibility, which is installed by Civ4. This is particularly baffling since DirectX9.0c was released in August 2004 (according to MS) and the NVidia driver that supports this was only released on 9 December 2005!!!

[Tommar]

Originally posted by fittstim


You know what Tommar?...you're absolutely correct. Only the latest NVidia driver (81.95) allows DirectX9.0c compatibility, which is installed by Civ4. This is particularly baffling since DirectX9.0c was released in August 2004 (according to MS) and the NVidia driver that supports this was only released on 9 December 2005!!!

Thanks for letting me know. I've seen the problem occur in the past with other games, but wasn't certain that was the case here. Many times, just re-installing your old driver after a DX upgrade will fix things. Sometimes the DX upgrade won't mess you up at all, as it didn't me, this time. I'm suspecting that a DX install, regardless of whether or not it's an upgrade, might require a driver re-install, whether or not it's a driver upgrade. That's not always the case, for sure - it wasn't for me this time. But it seems to happen often enough that it's worth trying when video gets hosed in a new game.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by fittstim
You know what Tommar?...you're absolutely correct. Only the latest NVidia driver (81.95) allows DirectX9.0c compatibility, which is installed by Civ4. This is particularly baffling since DirectX9.0c was released in August 2004 (according to MS) and the NVidia driver that supports this was only released on 9 December 2005!!!

While I am not sure about the validity of your claim, I can tell you I could use 78.01 to play Civ 4 for hours. Or to make a long story short, it doesn't matter which driver I used. The game still froze solid.

[MrMeatshake]

Originally posted by Pickles78uk
my computer wont load any civ 4 games, the computer simply crashes when the load screen tries to move from the load screen to the game itself...

any ideas?

tom

i have a very similar crash - except that pretty much every time i LOAD a game it works fine, it's just when i attempt start a new game that it crashes. it gets to the end of the progress bar, says 'finished' and then goes to a black screen... then after a few senconds it seems to try to enter an invalid display res or refresh rate, because my monitor just goes 'eeeeeeeeee' (increasing in pitch and volume - descriptive, i know) and says 'no signal' and then nothing further happens, it just sits there. loading seems to work ok most of the time, though.

oh, i also got this crash when alt-tabbing out and back into the game yesterday, too.

[Addled Platypus]

Is this something new?

Went to play a pbem turn. Next thing I know, the game restarted three times, without me doing anything. One of the restarts came up with the pick a leader screen

Not only that, the pbem saves I recieve will not save right no matter what. The best thing going for now is for the turns to be sent in .rar format.

have not reached my limit of frustartion yet, but its getting close.

[aerofly]

i stoped the crashing!!

I just put a new custom computer together and bought civ 4 for it... Stats
Amd 64 3200
ATI 1300pro 256mb
1GB DDR 400 (Kingston)

play the game 30 min then crashes
upgraded new comptuer to:

2GB DDR 400 (kingston)

NO CRASHES SINCE!!!!!!!
I have every little detail on and the game runs perfect now... they must have a memory handling bug....

so just upgrade your memory or wait 6 months for a new patch

got mine $78 on zipzoomfly.com

[cyrilrock]

mods not loading in civ4

hi,
im new to civilization and i don't know anything about the game. my game starts perfectly but when i click on the tutorials the civ4 crashes to desktop. then i tried goign to advance then load a mod and try all the different type of mode out there and all of them crashes to the desktop. can anybody please help me. b/c this game is useless for me without the tutorials.

i have a
AMD 2400+
512 mb ram
with a AGP Nvidia Geforce 6200 259 Mb DDR
i tried uninstalling my ace mega pack codec but still i have the problem

[aerofly]

get 2gb of RAM and it wont crash anymore

[MarkG]

new patch, new thread needed...