CTD's wasn't getting them before.

[Rook]

I have played Civ4 from release. I had some problems getting it working, but ran fine since then.

Recently, my ATI 9200 died and I replaced it with a 6800GS. The new card ran fine and much smoother. I finished the game I was playing when my ATI died.

Now I tried a new game, but thought I sould expand my horizions I bumped the number of AI from 7 to 18 the first game standard map. It CTD'd after 30 or so turns. I didn't like the situation I was in so started a new game with 13 civs and a large map. Played all the way to 100 BC no CTD's, but really messed up and decided to start again. New game, large map, 13 civs. Has CTD'd 2 times so far in different spots.

So is it the card or am I pushing the system too much?

I have an Athalon 64 3800, 1 gig of RAM and 6800GS 256Mb

[Rook]

Well, I tried a few things and still getting crashes. I DL'd the newest drivers for my video card which was painful 'cause it was a 20Mb DL and i have dial-up. Anyway, that didn't fix it. So I decided to try and play at the same settings I was playing before. Standard Map and 8 Civs. Nope, it still crashes.

Anyone have any ideas? The game should run better when you get better hardware, not worse. :C

[Rook]

Strangely, I was able to pinpoint the source of one particular ctd. I haven't play tested it enough to be sure it fixed all my problems.

I noticed the game would crash exactly in the same spot, 2 turns after the 1880 BC autosave. On a whim, I decided to shut off the audio options since nothing I did with video was working. It worked. So I went back and reenabled all the options, one by one until I found the one that was causing the crash. It turned out to be the interface audio. When it is enabled, the game crashes every time in the same exact spot. If its off, the game doesn't crash (further testing needed)

OK, so I narrowed it to the culprit. I can play without interface audio, but how do I fiz it permanently? I have been playing for months wihtout a problem. I made no changes to the audio card (built-in realtek)

Appreciate the help.

[alva]

The best thing to do is to sent the error reports to Microsoft. Yes, those things actually are usefull and get read.