Errror Playing Civ 4 Please Help Dying To Play!!!!!!!

[tempa]

I have XP i have Civ4 1.61patch and everything else i need. I launch Civ4 and it loads but then this error comes up saying:

Initialize Renderer failed. Check DirectX Installation, Latest graphics Drivers and Graphics settings Parameters:
-width = 1024
-height = 768
-flags = 0xc
-hwnd = 0x210068
-adaptrid = 0
-deviceid = 3
Error:Creation failed: Invalid 3d device type

I was told to install DirectX 9.0c which I did but the error still comes up. I believe someone had the same problem on this site but fixed it installing some Omega drivers or somthing which I have no clue about getting and what to do with them as I am new to this downloading, graphics and drivers stuff.

I am dying to play this game as i have heard its a brilliant game so i would be much appreciated of anyone who could help me out.

Cheers

[Willem]

It would probably help if you mentioned what some of your system specs are, in particular what kind of video card you're using. That was a message that used to be seen by a number of people that were using cards that weren't compatible with the game.

As for the Omega drivers, just do a search on Google. I just tried it and the link to where you get them is the first on the page. I'd include the link but you need to start doing those things like that for yourself.

[Sabre2th]

Have you installed DirectX from the CD? If I recall correctly, it was a slightly different version than they had on the website for a long time.

[Bkeela]

I get this problem when I have the Catalyst video card driver installed. My card is a Radeon 9800.

I never received the error until I upgraded to Warlords and the most current patch which is 2.13.

The Civ Fanatics forum had detailed information about the error, and I went to INCREDIBLE trouble following the instructions to fix the problem. Like totally deleting all driver information from the registry, reinstalling drivers from scratch, then doing some weird thing with a custom program. It didn't work.

I discovered that I could play the game with default Windows video drivers. Not ideal, but I just couldn't be bothered buggering around. I assume there is some weird incompatibility with the Catalyst driver for some reason.

Your best bet would be to search Civ Fanatics. This forum is hopeless. You could also try Firaxis support, which I couldn't be bothered with.

[Bkeela]

Here are some threads on this problem:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140655

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133132&page=2

The most disheartening thing is the threads are like three years old. When you ask for help here or at Civ Fanatics in 2008, they just blink at you like retards and don't know what you're talking about. One would have assumed the problem would have been addressed by recent patches. Doesn't seem to be the case though.

Note that both threads just peter out without any resolution. I guess there must only be a handful of Radeon users in the world, so it isn't a major problem.

[snoopy369]

The major ATI problems were indeed fixed by patches back in Vanilla (1.52). That said, it's quite possible for ATI to incur new problems as they change their drivers around - this is a very common problem with any game, unfortunately. Fix one game and they break four others

More than likely your and his problems were related to something other than the common error (the PAK problem), because that is no longer possibly the problem. I suspect Catalyst just has some issues in and of itself - it has conflicts with other games as well, perhaps it's a problem with gamebryo or some such.