Civ IV very slow can't uninstall

[snoopy369]

It's an installshield problem, not a civ4 problem How many other games have you had to uninstall at all...

Try re-installing Installshield, it might be a problem with it. That is periodically necessary. I don't remember the specifics, but it should be something like installshield.com probably, though I don't recall the parent company's name... You might have deleted something higher level than you were intended to.

[Unimatrix11]

Matt, i pity you - this is the kind of crap that usually happens to me - you know this stuff where you think "it works properly for probably a million people on earth - but of course not for me..."

[matt670]

hmm

hmmm.

no that's ok, I know I only deleted the Install Shield entry for Civ 4.

I don't want to do further damage by re-installing install shield now also..thanks though.

I will just restore Civ4 - the copy I have, and try to play with it some. I'm defragging my giant 80gb disk lol.

I realize the model I have (remember free to me) an
HP a1410y Pavillion, works great for most apps, and even with 8 Firefox tabs going, and 2 other programs, but Civ4 large worlds - not so well.

I will try after defragging, reduce my graphic options for Civ 4 again, and see what happens. Not worth it to keep going down this path for one large game at this point.

Thanks all,
matt

[Ming]

Removing the key is easy... and it solved all my problems.

Go to your Start button...
Select Run...
enter: regedit

Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Expand SOFTWARE
Find Folder for Firaxis Games and expand
Simply delete the proper folder

[matt670]

Ming - do you mean from this that you delete the key in the registry?

I did find it as you said very easy:

I have:

Firaxis

Sid Meirer's Civ 4

1.09

Do I need to delete the top level Firaxis folder in the registry then?

Any potential problems in doing this and just saving the registry?

Should I make a backup first?

Thanks...just got done defragging the 80GB drive, it was pretty fragmented, so that might help also...

Originally posted by Ming
Removing the key is easy... and it solved all my problems.

Go to your Start button...
Select Run...
enter: regedit

Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Expand SOFTWARE
Find Folder for Firaxis Games and expand
Simply delete the proper folder

[Ming]

I didn't delete the Firaxis folder... but then again, I have other Firaxis games

I just deleted the folder for the game.

Since the game isn't running, and you have to do a reinstall anyway, there is no potential problem for getting rid of the key.

Once I got rid of the key, and then deleted the folders that the game was located in, I had no problem reinstalling the game

[Targonis]

If you think that Civ 4 takes a lot of memory, you must not play any modern games. Some basic pieces of information:

Windows XP Home Edition takes between 85 and 150 megs for itself. This does not include anti-virus, printer monitors, or any other programs that run in the background.

Anti-virus will generally take between 150 and 350 megs of memory for itself. If you have a full security package(Norton Internet Security, McAfee security, etc...), that will tend to be closer to the 350 while a lean anti-virus like AVG will take less.

This means that you really need a minimum of 512 megs of RAM just to run Windows XP, let alone any applications.

Now, Civ 4 takes a variable amount of memory depending on map size, number of civs, etc, but you will generally want a full gig of memory in your machine to handle Windows XP plus background stuff plus whatever game or application you want to run.

If you have less RAM than you are trying to use, Windows will "borrow" from the hard drive(called virtual memory), which slows things down by a good amount. This is why the machine seems to slow to a crawl if you run a bunch of different programs at the same time.

Note that Windows Vista uses a bit more RAM than Windows XP, so while one gig of memory is enough for XP, going to 2 gigs or starting with 2 gigs with Vista really is not just a good idea, but required if you do anything serious with your machine.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Targonis

Anti-virus will generally take between 150 and 350 megs of memory for itself. If you have a full security package(Norton Internet Security, McAfee security, etc...), that will tend to be closer to the 350 while a lean anti-virus like AVG will take less.

WOW ! Thats crazy. Its like nuking flies, isnt it ?

Note that Windows Vista uses a bit more RAM than Windows XP, so while one gig of memory is enough for XP, going to 2 gigs or starting with 2 gigs with Vista really is not just a good idea, but required if you do anything serious with your machine.

Anything serious ? Like Civ ?

[Willem]

Originally posted by matt670
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.

HP has absolutely nothing to do with drivers for things like video and sound cards. They're just using components from other manufacturers and putting them together into a box. So if you need to update your drivers, which you sholud be doing on a fairly regular basis, then you'll have to go to the site of the company that produced that component. If you allow your drivers to get too out of date, then you can expect problems with some of the more recent games. Updating is just part of playing computer games these days.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Targonis
If you think that Civ 4 takes a lot of memory, you must not play any modern games. Some basic pieces of information:

Windows XP Home Edition takes between 85 and 150 megs for itself. This does not include anti-virus, printer monitors, or any other programs that run in the background.

Anti-virus will generally take between 150 and 350 megs of memory for itself. If you have a full security package(Norton Internet Security, McAfee security, etc...), that will tend to be closer to the 350 while a lean anti-virus like AVG will take less.

This means that you really need a minimum of 512 megs of RAM just to run Windows XP, let alone any applications.

Now, Civ 4 takes a variable amount of memory depending on map size, number of civs, etc, but you will generally want a full gig of memory in your machine to handle Windows XP plus background stuff plus whatever game or application you want to run.

If you have less RAM than you are trying to use, Windows will "borrow" from the hard drive(called virtual memory), which slows things down by a good amount. This is why the machine seems to slow to a crawl if you run a bunch of different programs at the same time.

Note that Windows Vista uses a bit more RAM than Windows XP, so while one gig of memory is enough for XP, going to 2 gigs or starting with 2 gigs with Vista really is not just a good idea, but required if you do anything serious with your machine.

According to the Warlords packaging, minimum ram is 256MB while recommended is 512MB. You seem to be saying that these figures are too low. have I understood you correctly

RJM

[Targonis]

The minimum FREE memory is what it should be saying, not minimum total memory. The problem with the so-called minimums on packages is that they assume that you have no other software installed on the machine, meaning no anti-virus, no printer monitors(to tell you when your printer is working, ink levels, etc), and so on.

So, if you only have 256 megs of RAM in your system, that means you have 0(or fewer) megs of RAM, 512 megs of RAM might give you 128 megs of RAM free, which is still on the low side. So you really NEED 1 gig these days.

Now, to be fair to Civ 4, if you look at any other games out there, the minimums are either in the same area or much higher. If you look at a game like Neverwinter Nights or Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the requirements are MUCH higher.

You should be looking at the recommended requirements to really see what you SHOULD have if you want to play a game in it's full glory.

For ANY game out there(except the cheap shareware games from places like popcap.com), you really need a minimum of the following these days:

For Windows XP, 1 gig of RAM, for Vista 2 gigs of RAM

CPU/Processor: a 2GHz Pentium 4(or AMD 2000+ rated chip) or above. Note that a P4 2.4GHz is really the lowest end, but some games will still be playable on a 2GHz P4.

The video card/GPU should support DirectX 9 in hardware. While you can install DirectX 9 on any machine, if the video card does not do DX 9 itself, you may run into problems.

Now, in addition to this, integrated video(laptops and machines where the video is built into the motherboard) tends to have no dedicated video memory, meaning video memory comes from main system memory. If you have even 512 megs of RAM but have integrated video, you will see 64 to 128 megs or more of that 512 megs just not showing up because the video card/chip has claimed it. This is another reason why having 1 gig of RAM is really key.

Memory sizes are done using base 2 math, and while you may see some computer systems in-between, you will see memory modules in sizes of 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB(1024MB), 2GB, and 4GB and larger will be released in time. Most systems put in two "sticks" of memory, so a 512 meg system will tend to have two sticks of 256. Some systems will let you mix and match, but not all, allowing you to put a 256 and a 512 meg in at the same time to give you 768 megs(which is enough for Windows XP, but it's not terribly common).

There are other limitations, but you won't run into those until you have over 3GB of memory.

For what it's worth, a new machine with 2GB of RAM and dual-core processor with DX9 capable video(low end integrated) is down to $550 or so retail. The new machines you see out there will generally come with Windows Vista, so that 2GB is really almost a requirement to make the machine run decently, which is why you should accept NO machine that has Vista and only 1 gig of RAM. Note that the HP a6110n(also has 2GB) is selling for $475 or so these days, but since they are out of production(the 6200 series has replaced it), these are getting harder to find.

With prices this low, it makes less and less sense to put $200 or more into doing upgrades for any single core processor based machine, including regular Pentium 4 and Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Celeron, Sempron, Durion. Yes, the Athlon 64 will run games decently, but if you are considering buying new memory and video card to replace the integrated video, you would probably be better off just getting a new tower in the long run. In the time it takes you to save up the price difference between the $200+ to upgrade the old machine and get a new tower with my suggested 2GB of memory and dual-core processor, that single-core based machine will go into the "obsolete and can't handle the next game after Civ 4 you want to play" point. Sorry for my bad grammar this morning, it's 7:30am and I am having a problem waking up.

[matt670]

Targonis.

Targonis,

Thanks for the help, but I do play other modern games, such as Second Life, etc.

They do say 512K is recommended in their requirements, as another poster below said.

Also, realize I didn't have problems until the later stages of the game - not in the early days, or medieval times, but sometime after 1950-1980, and especially around year 2000 and only with a LARGE map.

I had played multiple times earlier this year in small worlds for quicker to completion games, without a problem.

My system starts with 448MB RAM, but I disabled anti-virus during play, and Firefox (Firefox with multiple tabs can run at least 70-80MB), so I had plenty of RAM for smaller size games saved in the 150-200K range. Only ran into the problem in the 400K or more game save sizes.

What you are talking about with virtual memory is also called paging, and you are right of course on that.

I also did a good defrag yesterday for the first time in almost a year since I got the PC, and the results are somewhat better since then.

You can also change your options to Low for graphics use etc. in the Options panel in Civ 4.

The machine I use is not really a gamer machine. I use it for other work that I do.

I may get another some day, but that is not going to happen now, so the most I would do in the next 6 months is bring the RAM up by 512MB, but that will have to wait for now.

I'm sure many people that play are in the same position, valuing Civ4 and other games...but it is not the main reason I have the PC, and it is fine for most other tasks.

Thanks for the input.

Originally posted by Targonis
If you think that Civ 4 takes a lot of memory, you must not play any modern games. Some basic pieces of information:

Windows XP Home Edition takes between 85 and 150 megs for itself. This does not include anti-virus, printer monitors, or any other programs that run in the background.

Anti-virus will generally take between 150 and 350 megs of memory for itself. If you have a full security package(Norton Internet Security, McAfee security, etc...), that will tend to be closer to the 350 while a lean anti-virus like AVG will take less.

This means that you really need a minimum of 512 megs of RAM just to run Windows XP, let alone any applications.

Now, Civ 4 takes a variable amount of memory depending on map size, number of civs, etc, but you will generally want a full gig of memory in your machine to handle Windows XP plus background stuff plus whatever game or application you want to run.

If you have less RAM than you are trying to use, Windows will "borrow" from the hard drive(called virtual memory), which slows things down by a good amount. This is why the machine seems to slow to a crawl if you run a bunch of different programs at the same time.

Note that Windows Vista uses a bit more RAM than Windows XP, so while one gig of memory is enough for XP, going to 2 gigs or starting with 2 gigs with Vista really is not just a good idea, but required if you do anything serious with your machine.

[matt670]

Thanks Ming.

I was able to restore Civ4 from a backup without the re-install or removing the entry from the registry, and it is somewhat better after my defrag yesterday.

Thanks for your help.

matt

Originally posted by Ming
I didn't delete the Firaxis folder... but then again, I have other Firaxis games

I just deleted the folder for the game.

Since the game isn't running, and you have to do a reinstall anyway, there is no potential problem for getting rid of the key.

Once I got rid of the key, and then deleted the folders that the game was located in, I had no problem reinstalling the game

[Ming]

Glad to hear that everything worked out.

KEEP ON CIVIN'

[matt670]

Update - Defragging drive realy sped it up!

Update - defragging the drive only, without adding any memory, updating drivers, or anything else sped it up 2-3X, so while still slow, it is now playable, and does not hang anymore during a turn change - which is a major improvement.

I would definitely recommend anyone else having a sudden slowdown after the game goes from 200K in save size to say over 400K to give the defragging a try. Also using the lowest graphic options.

Worked for me, and played on with my Civ4 game past year 2025 for several hours tonight.

matt

Originally posted by Ming
Glad to hear that everything worked out.

KEEP ON CIVIN'