# Civ IV crashes - video driver problem?



## jcleroy (May 3, 2009)

I don't play many games, but I love Civilization. Civ III worked fine on my 4 year old PC, but Civ IV is giving me problems.

Civ IV works fine at the start, but an hour or so into a game it will freeze up or kick me out. It also sometimes minimizes to reveal my desktop with the graphics completely screwed up.

If I restart my computer it starts fine and will allow another turn or so, but then crashes again. If I start a new game it behaves the same way - fine for the first hour or so, but then crashing after only a turn or two. It seems that my computer can't handle something that accumulates during the game, or that occurs after a game is played for a certain length of time.

I did get a video driver error previously, but no longer since I updated my video driver and downloaded and installed the Civ IV updates. I am using a Nvidia GeForce 6150 le.

A prior thread on this website mentioned adjusting the "CivilizationIV.ini" file, but it stopped short of offering a specific solution.

Thanks for your time and attention. Your karma will get a plus if you can help to end this frustration .


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

probably overheating issue. Do you have a fan that can be blown into the computer (with cover off)?


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## jcleroy (May 3, 2009)

While playing today I tried an experiment...

When the game began to hang up, I immediately hit control-alt-delete. This took me to my desktop and showed that the game was minimized but still running. I would click "civilization" on the tool bar and I was back in business. This worked successfully for five or six times, allowing me an additional turn each time.

Then the game stopped suddenly, threw me back onto the desktop, and gave me two errors:

"Failed to allocate video memory. Please try reducing your graphic settings. File:\Source\main\Civilization4\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\CoreLibs\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line: 1019"

and

"Runtime Error! Program ...raxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Civilization4exe This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information."

I have since began another game, and have had no problem. I expect though, that after an hour or so the game will start failing again, as usual.

I am happy to look into better ventilation tomorrow, but if that were the problem, why do new games work fine for hours immediately after old games crash ?


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## Warlord Jimmy (Jul 10, 2007)

Hey 

As Couriant says, it is likely to be due to overheating. However it could be due to a number of factors. In your first post you mentioned that it works fine for the first hour or two of playing a new game.

Its important to note that as the game progresses it will require more and more resources of your computer due to the increase in the amount of activity going on on-screen - the game becomes more complex as you meet new leaders, start trade negotiations etc. This could be why the game is freezing after an hour or so. This is usually solved by reducing the graphics settings as low as you can (you can bring them up again slowly if you find that the game is running smoothly). Some things which require the most from your graphics card in particular are the "anti-aliasing" settings, you should probably have this turned off.

With regards to the error you received, it definitely looks like an issue with the graphics card (only going by the word "renderer" however) - as you get into later game stages your graphics card will be working harder and therefore will be producing more heat, so extra ventilation is definitely worth looking into.

Other than that Civ IV is a game which consumes about 200MB of your RAM even when minimized. Could you possibly post some more detailed specifications of your computer? 

Hope this was helpful,

Jimmy.


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## jcleroy (May 3, 2009)

Thank you so much for your suggestions. They have definitely helped, but have not entirely solved the problem.

I set the game graphics to their lowest level, and made certain that "anti-aliasing" was off (which it was). This allowed me to play for the last two days with no freeze or crash - a great improvement!

I wanted to see if adjusting the graphics alone would solve my problem, but alas, it did not. Now the game (much further along than before) will freeze without completing one turn - usually in one to two minutes. When I hit "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" to exit the game, I find that the graphics settings on the control panel have also been reduced to the minimum, and the display is awful - grainy, hard to read, and far worse than reducing the graphics to their lowest level myself.

Today I wanted to try the game immediately after starting my computer to see if it would behave differently if the computer had not been on for a while, and would hopefully be cooler. This made no difference, as the game again froze after a minute or so.

My system is an HP Pavilion, AMD Athlon(tm) 64X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, 1.80 GHz, and 960 MB of Ram. I am running Windows XP, Service Pack 3.

I am now looking into the cooling issue. Is there a way to determine how hot the computer is getting? I thought there was a way to get a temperature reading, but I have no idea how to do this.

I will get a small fan and see if better ventilation does the trick. If it does, can I just replace the current fan on my computer?

Please let me know if you have any further suggestions. The prospect of opening my computer up every time I play this game isn't that appealing.


Thanks again,

Chris


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## Warlord Jimmy (Jul 10, 2007)

Hello again,

What you will find is that when you reduce the graphics settings in-game this will also reduce the desktop settings too in order to get the best performance from the game as possible - normally they reset once you close the game, but seeing as you are unable to close the game down properly due to the freezing this might not happen. Although they should automatically reset after restarting the computer.

There is freeware available which can monitor the temperature of your hardware, SpeedFan, for example, downloadable here:
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
I myself have a HP Pavillion computer and this program works for me, so hopefully it should work for you too.

With regards to the cooling issue, you may or may not know, your computer should already have 2 or 3 small fans already in operation in your computer; one located over the top of you CPU and one on your PSU. One solution to the cooling would be to upgrade your PSU, as many of these come with fans built in and if you are still running off the original PSU that came with the computer then this might be well worthwhile doing as the stock PSU's are generally very noisy (and sometimes unreliable) anyway. I am currently using a "Sweex 400W dual fan PSU" - this has one fan located underneath the unit which blows air into the computer, since upgrading I have found that the number of freezes I get have been greatly reduced.


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## jcleroy (May 3, 2009)

Thanks again!

I've downloaded the freeware you suggested, which I read can adjust my fan speeds and the temperatures at which they turn on. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this. Can you shed any light on this?

Take care,

Chris


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## Warlord Jimmy (Jul 10, 2007)

Thats a good question! I don't know how to do this myself, I will have a look around and see what I can find.

By the way, are the temperatures looking okay? Nothing excessively high? I'm no expert but I'd say over 80C is when you'd start having problems.

You might want to try looking here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/829118.html
Nothing here works for me, but seems to be different depending on your hardware.


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## jcleroy (May 3, 2009)

In that case, temperature might not be the issue.

I have only hit 40C rarely - usually all my temps are in the 30's.

I swithced the reading to fahrenheit. After I freeze up I check the temperature and it hasn't been over 104F.


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## Warlord Jimmy (Jul 10, 2007)

Hmm.

Certainly 30C is a healthy temperature to be operating at. 

Have you tried uninstalling/re-installing the game? I'm running out of thing to suggest. But sometimes when the game is instlled files can be skipped/ignored or files can get corrupted. You may need to re-install any patches afterwards.

The only other things I can imagine that are causing the problem are that:
1. It's a fault with your hardware (possbily the graphics card)
2. Your computer may be infected with a virus.

Which anti-virus software are you running? I doubt this is the issue, but can never be too careful.


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## jcleroy (May 3, 2009)

Thanks again for all your help. I guess this might just be the PC gods messing with me.

My anti-virus is up to date, and it says I have no bugs. I've uninstalled and reinstalled this game several times.

The only other symptom I can add is that sometimes the map will be stripped of all detail (no cities, no units, no roads, etc.) and then it will either return to normal or it will freeze up.

I guess my video driver must be damaged in some unique way, and freezing during this game is the only symptom.

Thanks again. Unless you or someone else has any other suggestions, I suppose we can all file this problem as "unresolved".


Take care,

Chris


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