Constant crashing

[Faeelin]

Okay, I load up civ3. I play for a fw minutes, then... the game crashes. every time I"ve played it crashes. attempting to play again wthout restarting results in a different crash, where the picture remains on the back of my screen. I tried calling tech support, but am constantly disconnected.


Help me!!!!

[Utrecht]

Do you get any type of error message whne crashing?

What is it that you do right before it crashes?

[Faeelin]

When I estart, I get an error caused by bwink32.dll. First time it crashes (after restarting comp) it crashes randomly, usually when I'm clicking on a unit.

[Utrecht]

If you are running Win 2k - look in the readme - you will need to replace wour Bink video dll with one that was shipped.

[Faeelin]

I have numerous binkw32's

One is in the civ3 program file, one is in window's temp, one came with the irwar demo, one came with the empire earth demo, one came with arcanum, and one came with stronghold. which do I replace with which?

[Faeelin]

Ihave me, not 2000 by the way.

[Utrecht]

Do not know which one to replace - I would direct you to the readme file for specifics.....

[IMA_Petard]

same issue...

I'm havung the same issue...game keeps locking up on me at random points...Here's my specs...

win98SE
Athlon 800
Asus V7700 (geforce2 64mb)
256 Mb ram
Sound Blaster Live xgamer
3.1Gb hard drive space

I've closed everything except systray and explorer...tried turning off all Sound in the game..changed my desktop to 1024x780...
reinstalled DX8 from the civIII cd...
I also defragged and cleaned my temp files...
all drivers are latest releases...
I am using the Asus video drivers however...going to try detonator drivers next...

Not getting any error messages, the game simply freezes at random points and I have to kill the power...total lockup...I haven't had any trouble with any other games on this system, but I'm not complaining...tinkering with your PC is part of PC gaming...If I wanted hassle free I'd buy a console...

anyone know if their is a DX applet for win 98 similar to the one for win 2k/xp??? and where I can get it???

[IMA_Petard]

I installed the 21.83 detonator drivers and everything works fine now!!!! Played for 6 hours last night but I got map screwed...no IRON on my mini continent!!!...makes things difficult...DAMN!
And the AI is not weak....this is gonna be fun!!!

[fezick31]

I am having the same problem with my system. It will play for 20-30 minutes and then freeze, usually during the AI's movement, but always on an event like a troop movement or window pop-up.
I have yet to make it beyond 200 AD. It doesn't have any performance problems until the lockup, which requires reseting the computer.

My system:
win2K
Athlon 1400
512 PC133 RAM
MAtrox G400 dualhead card

Has anyone had any similar problems or is anyone else running a matrox card and gotten it to work?

[Nojbed]

Did this problem ever gain a solution?

WinXP Pro (all patched)
Athlon 1.4 266 FSB
PNY Verto (nVidea TNT2) Graphics (latest drivers)
MSI MBoard (KT133 chipset)
256 RAM
(etc)

Have tried running as Win98 as suggested and yup I have the latest drivers. Simply put, game runs fine for xx minutes and then locks solid, usually in unit movement but can simply be moving the mouse around the screen.

Following the lock up (requiring hard restart) the last savegame is unusable with the error message either being,
"Invalid Save Game" (can then reload the previous one)
"...Invalid tile" (requires killing through TaskManager and then loading previous savegame)
"...invalid unit" (ditto)

This is making the game totally unplayable and frustrating. It means that I'm rebooting my machine every five or ten minutes to get any gameplay of Civ3 at all!

This is the only application that has any problems at all, so it's a Civ3 problem. Is there a fix???

Thanks

[shammy]

My civ3 crashed exactly like faeelin's one, after few minutes it just froze.. and yes, the picture looked funny after next restarting also

then i put the w2k bink file to use and never had a single crash after that, other settings on my Win ME are 1024x768 resolution in 32 bit palette, smooth fonts. no problems at all
----------
duron 700mhz on asus a7v
ati radeon 32 sdr
256mb

[fezick31]

found the solution to my problem from before. My board (KT7A-RAID by abit) needed a bios upgrade to fully support the processor. So anyone who is still having problems after upgrading everything else may want to check for bios upgrades.

i know abit is a popular board...their site is URL=http://www.abit-usa.com]www.abit-usa.com[/URL] .

hope this helps anyone with simliar problems to me. I haven't had a single crash since i updated.

[The Commodore]

That's funny...I just updated, and I still have the problems...