Civ IV very slow can't uninstall

[matt670]

I've played various Civ games for many years.
Really liked Civ 2.

Anyway - got Civ IV early this year, and love it.

I have played 20-30 hours without a problem, especially on smaller worlds.

Played a current game through year 1999 approx. on Large world.

Was fine until later in the game, then began slowing down.

My PC is one year old:
HP Pavilion 061 running Windows XP
Celeron(R) D CPU 3.20GHz
448MB RAM

I know they say 512MB is best, but wasn't any problem until later in the game.

Problem is by 1990s it slowed down, and was taking 3-5 minutes just to bring up the game when I loaded a saved game.

Then takes 2-3 minutes at times to do one turn - one year.

I thought maybe re-install, or put on a patch.

Tried patching it from the Civ site, and this blew up.

Tried uninstall, and this had an error too. Submitted it, and have been going back and forth for a week - tried removing several files from Install Shield, but still don't have the right one.

I had removed by deletion Civ 4 when all else failed, but now can't re-install either.

I was able to restore what I had out there - but still very slow on my game stuck in 2000!

Anyone else see similar performance on larger worlds with just less than 512K RAM?

I'm wondering if simply adding another 512K to 1 GB RAM would solve the whole thing?

Is it just paging here because the world is so large?

BTW, I only have 9 cities, kept my nation small, but it has to go through all the other civs also.

Love the game thogh, just DOG SLOW.

LOL

Matt

[snoopy369]

You have two problems (and probably a third). First off, your RAM. 448MB isn't enough, particularly when XP eats most of that off the bat. Definitely add at least 512mb more, that gives you a quick fix.

A Celeron is not a good processor for this either, that will be part of the problem too (though not nearly the problem that the RAM is).

Third, my guess is your video card isn't that good either if it's a Celeron HP Pavilion; it could be onboard graphics. That's not good either

That said - add 512MB ram and get back to us. You might want to try playing on smaller map sizes; you're right that the other civs make it slow down just as much as you.

There are some tricks you can use to uninstall it if that's needed, if the 512MB ram upgrade doesn't help get back to us but if it does - and i'm confident it would - hopefully you'll be back with CIV strategy questions instead of tech problems

[matt670]

Thanks. Pretty much what I thought re: 512MB - trying that first.

Also, I got this PC as a bonus reward, so zero cost - would have had at least 1GB if I had paid for it.

You make good points though - and thanks.

Take care,
Matt

[Lancer]

Snoopy, I have 256 SD RAM, whatever that is, but I added a Video card a while back. So how does one add RAM? Can I just go to a comp store and say, "gimme some RAM?"

[snoopy369]

You need to find out what sort of RAM your computer takes. SDRAM is one sort, so hopefully this is the sort... you could indeed go to a computer store and ask, but make sure they give you the right sort. Better to go to newegg.com and get it there...

Also check the motherboard slots to see how many you can take. Ram is very long and short (less than 2" high and maybe 6" long) and usually you have either 2 or 4 slots for it; each card has a bunch of largeish black chips on it neatly arranged (typically a power of 2, so 8 or 16).

If you have 256MB RAM and are running civ, you're hopelessly slow ... unless you mean Video RAM which is totally different.

[Lancer]

I am hopelessly slow, but thankfully my comp doesn't seem too bad.

You're always here, don't get much sleep?

The front of the comp says "DDR SDRAM memory".

I'll open my case before our next trip into the city and see what I can see.

[marvinkosh]

Remember though that memory comes in different speeds. If you can find a specifications sheet for the motherboard in your computer (very often the make and model of the board are displayed on screen at startup) it'll tell you what speed of DDR SDRAM it supports.

[Brizey]

Originally posted by marvinkosh
Remember though that memory comes in different speeds. If you can find a specifications sheet for the motherboard in your computer (very often the make and model of the board are displayed on screen at startup) it'll tell you what speed of DDR SDRAM it supports.

Or get one of the CPUID freeware products that tell you exactly what is installed.

[matt670]

tricks to uninstall Civ IV

Let me know what the tricks are to uninstall Civ 4 please.

Since I originally deleted it, and then put it back, I'd like to try a fresh install first to make sure what I have now is OK, and I can't even un-install it.

I must say that I will likely upgrade 512MB more at some point - but not right now - and I only see this issue with Civ 4, nothing else, so Civ4 must be using a lot of memory for these large worlds later in the game.

I had no problem in the early game in a large world, and have played small worlds to 2500 with no problems many times for faster games.

Anyway - I am not satisfied with Civ 4 support either at this point.

I have installed over 20 items since I had the PC almost a year ago now - and have never had uninstall fail like on Civ 4!

Support had me try to remove a folder or rename it for Install Shield, but that didn't work, and I see other people have had the same problem, and the folder name varies on their solution site.

The latest today is that support is saying my video driver etc. is not up to date - and to go to some site to update them.

I'm not changing my whole system, and updating using drivers at non-HP sites just to play Civ4! From past experience, I suspect they do not know what to do, and are just asking me to update drivers, etc. hoping it will fix it.

Remember, I was playing fine for 20-30 hours, over 10 games before this game - so the issue is with this game - a large world game that slowly bogs down.

I'll add the memory later - but what are your tricks to uninstall please, so I can get a fresh copy of the game at least, and then maybe apply one patch they have out there (recommend the current one?) before trying it once more.

Thanks,
Matt

Originally posted by snoopy369


There are some tricks you can use to uninstall it if that's needed, if the 512MB ram upgrade doesn't help get back to us but if it does - and i'm confident it would - hopefully you'll be back with CIV strategy questions instead of tech problems

[Ming]

I had no problem doing an uninstall... I just deleted the folder with the game, and then ran:

regedit

and deleted the folder with the regestration keys for the game.

And I had no problems doing a clean new install after that.

[Unimatrix11]

I dont know about matt, ming, but personally i´d rather try new drivers than fumble around with the registry. I´d say if that was supposed to help matt, then at least give him more detailed info about where to find what he is supposed to delete, please.

BTW i think its funny how the opening post keeps talking about 512K(!) - Amiga ?

[matt670]

Unimatrix11 lol

Unimatrix,

You got me there with the 512K vs. 512M, LOL.

I can remember upgrading an Apple II from 48 to 64K!
LOL
circa 1981 that was the latest then LOL

Appreciate your point about monkeying with the registry. I'm not really into doing driver or registry changes for something like this at this point - as you said...

May try viewing the registry for a clue though...

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
I dont know about matt, ming, but personally i´d rather try new drivers than fumble around with the registry. I´d say if that was supposed to help matt, then at least give him more detailed info about where to find what he is supposed to delete, please.

BTW i think its funny how the opening post keeps talking about 512K(!) - Amiga ?

[Unimatrix11]

One should try to sell 512K RAMs on ebay - everyone will just assume 512M are meant and buy them for like 10 bucks a piece... If you think thats unrealistic: I once saw a guy selling a DVD-drive BOX. The offer said: "Includes box and cables" - the price was just like you´d expect for the drive - but that wasnt included. Neither was it displayed on any picture of the offer (only the box) - absolute legal rip-off... (i do not think thats right and something anyone should do, tho, seriously)

[snoopy369]

If you had a 512K memory module, it's probably worth more than a 512M memory module

matt, the trick to uninstalling is as Ming says, delete the registry key; but you often need to actaully delete the installshield folder (and/or reg key). There's a hidden folder called c:\installshield\ (or thereabouts) that has all of your installation information in there; you have to figure out which is civ - which is NOT straightforward, you have to use date basically to figure it out - and then delete it. Once you've done that, Installshield will think you don't have Civ installed and go ahead and let you install it again.

It's an unfortunate bit of laziness on Installshield's part not to look at the actual Civ exe and such ... oh well.

[matt670]

uninstall.

re: uninstalll

I found the one in installshield, and removed it this time, deleted, gone.

removed Civ4 also.

now can't re-install.

run setup, setup blows up in install shield:

Error Code: -5009 : 0x8002802b
Error Information:
>Ctor\ObjectWrapper.cpp (163)
>Ctor\ObjectWrapper.cpp (391)
>Kernel\Component.cpp (1163)
>Ctor\ObjectWrapper.cpp (34)
>Ctor\DriverWrapper.cpp (31)
>Kernel\Component.cpp (1152)
>Kernel\CABFile.cpp (384)
>SetupDLL\SetupDLL.cpp (1526)
PAPP:Sid Meier's Civilization 4
PVENDOR:Firaxis Games (##IDS_PRODUCT_URL##)
PGUID:CFBCE791-2D53-4FCE-B3FB-D6E01F4112E8
$11.0.0.28844
@Windows XP Service Pack 2 (2600) BT_OTHER 8.0

So, wasn't able to uninstall, now have removed entry in installshield, and can't reinstall.

sweet!

Only Civ4 has this kind of problem, never saw it with any other software installed or used in the last year.