Civ3 not loading at all

[hanmies]

Hmm... I though I posted this before on some other thread... Oh well.

My problem is quite simple one, Civ3 won´t start at all. When I click the Civ3 executable it displays the normal loading splash screen for a couple of seconds. After that - nothing. No running processes, no error messages, nothing.

One thing I did notice was that on my old Windows ME installation on this machine the game worked. But on Windows 2000 installations I´m running now the problem occurs.

Installing the patch won´t cure the problem. I´ve also tried a lot of different drivers for the nVidia card. I´ve even tried to use the integrated Intel display adapter. For my other devices I´m running the latest device drivers.

Hardware setup:
Asus CUSL2 (i815)
PIII 700 MHz
256 MB

nVidia Geforce 2 MX
SB Live! X-Gamer

Toshiba DVD-rom drive

[MrWhereItsAt]

Well, I can't solve this problem, just make my observations on it.

I have had this happen before, but to other games eg Max Payne, and ONLY in Windows 2000. Each time I found no driver changes helped, and each time the game worked in Win ME (at least until ME next crashed and needing reinstalling ).

I also had much reduced performance in Win2k than ME, even with only generic graphics drivers in ME as compared to the nVidia ones in Win2k!

My only suggesions are that this may be a copy protection problem - some sites suggest you uninstall any CD copy software (like CloneCD etc); otherwise try a different OS if it's an option! I've found Win2k to work flawlessly with everything but a few games created specially for Win95 (like the C&C Win95 edition) and one or two like Max Payne and, before the patch, Civ3.

Until I can get my hands on XP though, I can't confirm that the OS really matters.

[Mikel]

Can't help just adding to the confusion. I have 2 PC's both running Windows 98. One PC is fine ( it crashed for the first time last night but in around 100 gaming hours thats acceptable), the other PC does exactly what you described. I can only suggest that it may be because this PC doesn't have Direct 8.1 but there are a lot of differences between the 2 machines, this one just seems the most relevant.

[The Viceroy]

Ive seen the same problems also at my brother in-laws in India .. he has W98 SP1, and has an identical issue. The Civ3 loading screen displays, and the CD continues to spin , spin and either it simply stops spinning, and nothing else happens, or it gives me a nice CIV3.EXE memory error.

I have also seen this on my old W98 with other games like Populous and SimCity3000 ...

This is definatly something to do with graphics, as the point of divergence, is the point when the screen flickers black for a second (initialisation of the DirectX screens im assuming) .. so it could be a DirectX issue or something impacting on DirectX ..

Eitherway, Im updating his machine to XP, as I have no such issues on my XP set ..

If thats not an option, try re-installing Windows98 from scratch, and install CIV3 first ... see if it works.. if it does, then slowly add each bit of software back on, checking CIV3 still works .. eventually, you will find the offending item .. let us all know

[IVANOV]

I've got the same problem, did you allready solve it.
Please let me now how?!?!

[Funk]

Hey there,

I had a similar problem. I am running WinXP, and I'd load the game fine, and right after the opening cinematic, my screen would just go completely black. Music would play and the game would be running, there would just be no video to it.

I've since fixed my problem. If you right click on the shortcut to your game (maybe even the executable itself), select properties, then select the compatability tab, then mark the box that says "run in compatability mode for" and select Win98.

Hopefully this will help you out on your problem.


Funk

[SSushi]

I think this problem is caused by the intro movie. Try deleting the movies (or moving them to another folder). This worked for me; the game starts now. However, there are no options on the main screen. Pressing return (or clicking an invisible button) gets me to the next sceen, but again text and the buttons don't respond).

The quest continues...

[Khanis]

me too


I am getting the exact same problem. I started playing this game again a few days ago and it was running fine. I ran into the industrial age bug but i got it fixed. Now its doing this crap! After it first did this i reinstalled. It worked for last night, but now i cant get it to load at all and ive reinstalled both the patch and the program multiple times. It cant be my OS, the only things i can think of it being is a virus or my cd-rom is screwed up. But my cd-rom works fine with everything else. HELP! Im in the middle of invading Egypt i dont have time for this nonsense!

[patarroyo]

reinstall from kmode problem led to splash screen issue! doh!

I was getting a BSOD kmode exception in n4disp.dll after I downgraded to the latest nvidia reference drivers.

So I uninstalled Civ3 and reinstalled it. I got the splash crash, where it just hangs on startup, with civilization3.exe and some other ~*.tmp process doing nothing till Windoze sez they are unresponsive.

Then I patched it. Same problem with the splash crash, tho. Not sure what to do now... waiting to kill Babylonians and Chinese.

[SSushi]

Hmmmmmmmmmm

It's annoying! I've been on the phone to the help desk and they couldn't help much.

Try deleting the movies, this should get the game to start.

[Khanis]

i deleted them....nothing helped

[Khanis]

i have an idea...but i dont know how to change media options....i recently installed real player and i think that might be causeing the problem, anyone know how to reset the default media player?

[Travathian]

Try this:

Uninstall the game and delete the Civ3 folder.

Reinstall the game. Restart your computer. Apply the patch, restart the computer. See if that fixes it.

Some dumb things:

You are running 1024x768 or greater for your desktop right?

You are closing all programs running in the background, especially crap like Norton Systemworks or virus software, and especially during installations.

Plenty of other games run just fine right?

You have DirectX 8.1 and the latest drivers for your video card?

Like someone else mentioned, some systems cant play those opening movies, so just delete/rename it.

Khanis, real player has nothing to do with it, Firaxis doesnt use the default video player to play movies.

[SSushi]

I've tried all these things and the game runs like a bag of ****. Strangely, when i first played the game it ran as smooth as you like, with outlook, virus sw and morpheus downloading @4kb/s. Then one day it went pear shaped. RTCW runs fine, and my 3DMark2001 results are still the same.

Wierd....

[patarroyo]

have you tried nocd fix?

Please check out my thread regarding the splash crash. I managed to get rid of it by using the nocd executable for 1.16f. Lemme know if anyone tries it and it works.