Civ3 not loading at all

[Khanis]

i still cant get it to load....the patch doesnt help at all........i have Windows ME, 900 mhz athlon, 384 RAM, Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400....the game was working fine for 2 months and then one day it just went to **** for no reason...please help

[Gramphos]

Have you tried to reboot?

[Khanis]

ive tried everything shy of new drivers(worked with these drivers when i bought the game and for a month after words), reformatting my comp, and taking a flamethrower to my CD and buying a new one

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Khanis
ive tried everything shy of new drivers(worked with these drivers when i bought the game and for a month after words), reformatting my comp, and taking a flamethrower to my CD and buying a new one

Have you intlled any new programs?

Especially Virus scanners/develping tools?

[SSushi]

Reinstall OS

eventually, my pc ground to a halt and i reinstalled w2k. now civ 3 is ok. i wondered if the civ install messed up my os but dont know for sure. i do think that it was linked to me changing the refresh rate of my screen from 60 to 85 hz thou.

[Khanis]

my town doesnt have cable yet but it will in about a month....im not going to reformat untill i get cable because i will have about 300 megs of stuff i need to download to get everything running right, and on a 56k that would take 2 days....guess im screwed till then

[SSushi]

Downloading

best to use a resume dl agent like demon dowload and stay connected, you can get it done overnight like that on a 56k

[sethos]

SafeDisk Patch (file)

I had many of the same problems with the freeze on the splash screen and at start-up on my ME machine with Atholon 800 processor (and a SCSI CDR-W). I filled out the online form for the Safe Disk patch and after an extensive correspondence with Tech Support at Infogrames, they sent me the patch, which seems to be a different version of civ3.exe. Now the game loads fine. There are still some of the other glitches (i.e. game hangs while on computer's turn), but I've had it running for several days now (I've had it since late December, but only got the Safe Disk patch a week or so ago and installed it along with the 1.17f patch) without the initial problem, even with all other programs running (Direct CD, RealPlayer, Ocraware, etc.). If you think it will help, fill out the Safe Disk form and KEEP AFTER THEM! They seemed very reluctant to send it to me. I eventually asked them to send it to me and I'd see if it fixed my problem (which it did!).
Good Luck!
Sethos

[Pisnaz]

I have the same problems it seems that the reoccuring theme is the nvidia geforce 2 mx. Could the drivers for this chipset be gonzoing the game. I have noticed two things I have yet to try one is using something other than the default monitor inf file and the oyher is running out of 85 hz. This game ran (visually) great on my old 8meg ati all in wonder pro. Saince the upgrade for gaming I have had problems. I 'll post any soulotions I figure out.