It's Freezing! (Up!!)

[KennethL]

Does anyone else have this problem:
Very regularly, while I'm playing Civ III, the game will just freeze up and I'll have to perform a hard reboot.

Does anyone know if Firaxis will be working on fixing this in the patch I keep hearing so much about?

Thanks for your input. As you can probably imagine, I'm rather sore about the whole thing.

[darthx86]

Civ 3 requires DirectX 8 - have you installed that? If you're not sure, go to Start, Run, and enter in "Dxdiag" without the quotes. A gray box will pop up with all kinds of numbers. The bottom number lists the version. If it's not ver 8, then that's your issue. Either way, you should probably reinstall DirectX from the Civ 3 CD and try again.

If it turns out not to be a DirectX issue, then we'll need your system specs and driver versions to help you troubleshoot.

Good luck!

[KennethL]

Thanks for your input.

I checked and I am running DX8.

I'm not sure what system specs you'll need but here:
AMD T-Bird 800mhz
256meg RAM
NVidia GForce 3 video card (driver version 4.13.01.2181)
Soundblaster PCI (driver version 4.12.01.2003)
12x DVD-ROM

What other system specs would help?

Thanks for any help you can give. Knowing that a patch should be out soon helps.

Ken

[darthx86]

Originally posted by KennethL
Thanks for your input.

I checked and I am running DX8.

I'm not sure what system specs you'll need but here:
AMD T-Bird 800mhz
256meg RAM
NVidia GForce 3 video card (driver version 4.13.01.2181)
Soundblaster PCI (driver version 4.12.01.2003)
12x DVD-ROM

What other system specs would help?

Thanks for any help you can give. Knowing that a patch should be out soon helps.

Ken

Good start, but first, what OS?

What chipset? VIA? If so, what version (if any) of 4-in-1 drivers?

BTW, some others have noted that the Detonator 4 nVidia driver runs like crap. Try v12.41 (it's what I've been using for almost 3 months - veeeeery nice).

[KennethL]

I'm running Win98.

How would I find out what chipset, VIA, etc? (Sorry. I'm not that advanced.)

Also, I checked the NVidia site and all they have are Detonator drivers. Where would I find v12.41? (I'm still going to download the newest Detonator 2183 and see if that helps.)

Thanks again.

Ken

[darthx86]

Originally posted by KennethL
I'm running Win98.

How would I find out what chipset, VIA, etc? (Sorry. I'm not that advanced.)

Also, I checked the NVidia site and all they have are Detonator drivers. Where would I find v12.41? (I'm still going to download the newest Detonator 2183 and see if that helps.)

Thanks again.

Ken

The chipset will be listed in the motherboard manual. More than likely, it's VIA, but honestly, I would work on the video and DirectX before messing with the 4-in-1. I'm trying to find a link for you on the 12.4x nVidia driver...

Here ya go: http://www.videocarddrivers.com/nvidia.phtml
The 12.4x driver is at the very top. Download these and give 'em a whirl.

[KennethL]

I downloaded 1240, the newest one, and when I went to unzip it, it created a folder full of .dll, .vxd, .drv, etc files but nothing to install it with. How do I install it?

Further, it seems rather strange to me that all of my other games run just fine with the drivers I have except this one. Perhaps I should just wait until the patch?

Thanks for your help,

Ken

[darthx86]

Sorry for the late response - lots of late nights at work this week.

First, those other games probably did not require DirectX 8, so there's no telling there. Same goes for the video driver.

12.40? That should be fine - I have 12.41, which works perfectly.

How to change the video driver on Windows xxxx: Go to Device Manager and select Display Adapters. Right click on your video card and choose Properties. One of the tabs in there will say either "Reinstall driver" or "Update driver" - do one of those and point it to that directory you created. When you do this, you'll have to overwrite (and backdate) some files, so you'll want to make sure you have a good copy of your current driver beforehand, just in case!

Good luck!

[Aaaragorn]

Same Problem

Just to say this is exactly the same problem i'm having!
I'll be following this thread to see if following the advice works out otherwise I think I'll hold out for the patch!
Good luck

[KennethL]

I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only one who's having this problem!

By the way, Darth, I installed 12.40 and it didn't help. Civ III froze up in seconds and, when I ran RTCW, it was the first time I'd seen any slowdown in that game. I think I may go back to the 21.83 drivers.

Also, I'm running Direct X 8a. (I guess I never mentioned that, huh?)

So, thanks for your help but I guess I'm still going to be at the mercy of the patch.

[darthx86]

Originally posted by KennethL
I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only one who's having this problem!

By the way, Darth, I installed 12.40 and it didn't help. Civ III froze up in seconds and, when I ran RTCW, it was the first time I'd seen any slowdown in that game. I think I may go back to the 21.83 drivers.

Also, I'm running Direct X 8a. (I guess I never mentioned that, huh?)

So, thanks for your help but I guess I'm still going to be at the mercy of the patch.

Yeah, these efforts were worth a shot, eh?

I hope the patch helps!

[EvilKosh]

I've been noticing freeze-ups too (using Win98SE, the latest released gfx drivers from nvidia, and DX8.0a) mostly when a sound is playing and the screen changes (like the cheering sound when you get to add to your palace - when I click on the dialog to go to the palace it often freezes and the sound goes through a loop).

I just did an "update" from MS last night to DX8.1, but I haven't had a chance to try it out with Civ3 yet. I'll post here when I get some results.

BTW, the freeze-ups, though more frequent, are not NEARLY as annoying as the game performing an illegal operation when some key event happens. At least the freeze-ups you can re-load and continue your game... on the illegal operation errors it seems even if you backdate to an earlier autosave and make slightly different decisions, there's a nearly 100% likelihood that the same error will happen at the same place it did before, pretty much making the whole game up to that point a waste since you can't continue.