Hard system video crash contantly

from GalCiv2 Forums
Ok I've been reading the forums and trying some tips for a few weeks now to no luck, so I'm posting this hoping for some help. The game hard locks my system every session. It might take 30 min, it may take 5, but it always happens. Never a CTD either, it's a forced restart due to what appears to be the video driver. A few times the ATI driver auto-recover will kick in and restore the game and windows to normal but it's rare, normally the monitor loses the signal and I hear pops/snaps from the speakers. And this is absolutely the only app that causes me ANY problems, currently playing games like Battlefield 2 and AOE3 with nary a technical hiccup. And it appears to be completely random what causes it, at least I haven't noticed a trend. What I've tried so far:

Complete wipe and re-install of xp (was time for it anyways, formatted entire partition) and the game directory
ALL versions of the game, the last final and all betas
Latest versions of both the official ATI and the 3rd party Omega drivers
Increasing pagefile to 1.5 gig, also have 2 gigs of Ram
Different video options in game (no AA, full/window screen, star density, throttling, resolutions, etc)
Different video driver options (catalyst AI, AA/AF, v-sync, etc)
Changing sound acceleration setting in windows
Switching between 5.1 and 2 channel sound with audigy driver
Adjusting the video card pci latency

All other drivers (audio, mobo, mouse, etc) are completely up to date to the most recent releases. The only thing that helped was switching to the omega drivers, it seems to have reduced the crash frequency a bit. I used driver cleaner pro before I swapped to them.

Here's my debug.err, unable to post a smartexception dump as it doesn't pick up hard system locks

Debug Message: Version v1.1 BETA 4B last updated on: Thu Apr 20 15:53:54 2006
Debug Message: Could not find a TGN Serial No.
Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.*********
System Info
Time: 4/21/2006, 22:27:35
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Machine Name: HOME
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Languages: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: n/a
System Model: n/a
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.0
Processor: AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
Physical Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 251MB used, 3182MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS


Display Info
Display device 1:
Device Name: \\.\DISPLAY1
Card Name: RADEON 9800 PRO (Omega 3.8.231)
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc. (Omega 3.8.231)
Chip Type: RADEON 9800 PRO AGP (0x4E48)
DAC Type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Key Device: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E48&SUBSYS_00021002&REV_00
Display Memory: 128.0 MB
Current Display Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (100Hz)
Monitor Name: NEC MultiSync 97F
Monitor Max Resolution: 1920,1440
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6601
Driver Date: 2/21/2006 21:46:46
DirectX Acceleration Enabled: Yes



Sound info
Sound device 1:
Description: SB Audigy Audio [FFE0]
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0004&SUBSYS_00511102&REV_03
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: ctaud2k.sys
Provider: Creative
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.1164
Driver Date: 12/8/2005 11:55:46
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0


Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Thalan Empire (8): Researching: Impulse Drive
Debug Message: BuildShip: Cannot build ship type 8-Constructor M3-1 at Thala - No open slots
Debug Message: Iconian Refuge (9): Researching: Impulse Drive Mark II
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: BuildShip: Cannot build ship type 8-Constructor M3-1 at Thala - No open slots

Hope someone has an idea, given up on the game for awhile due to frustration
5,701 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Try switching off antialiasing in the gameoptions. I have a frozen game myself if I have antialiasing activated.
It freezes after 5-30 mins and without antialiasing if runs for hours.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Quick reply, thanks. Unfortunately I've tried that in both the game and the video driver, no luck
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For whatever reason, the game overheats poorly ventilated cards like a banshee. The first diagnostic measure I'd take is to open the side of the case and point a fan in to see if that helps.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I actually have 3 fans set up in the case already for proper airlflow, the cool air runs past the radeon and cpu and gets sucked out by the final fan. The airflow around the cooler on the video card reads about 76F/24.5C normally, shouldn't be heat. Or dust, air cleaned it recently.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow a post where someone has had a reasonable attempt to solve the problem, search the forums and stated what they have done, you've restored my faith in humanity!

But man that is a real bugger of a problem. I am thinking that if you are getting a forced restart, you are causing a kernel error. I used to see a similar problem on my old 9700 pro when playing a certain map on UT2K4 at a random time the VPU recover would kick in but the display was gubbed, needed a restart, evetually I found out that it crashed like that because I was overclocking my CPU and GPU, once set to normal it worked fine.

Interestingly enough every other map in the game worked fine with the overclocking just not that one. Nothing to do with heat just when overclocked that map would cause a crash. I wonder if that is a possible factor causing your problem. Are you overclocking the CPU or VIdeo card at all ? I don't think you are but I thought I'd ask.

EZ

AR
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Had a similar problem with amd 2800 and 9600 pro with same omega driver but at 1600x1200 and onboard sound. What seems to be working for me now is antialiasing off, throttle frame rate on and hardware cursor on. Ran 8 hrs yesterday with no lockups using the latest beta so it is either resolved or got lucky.

Originally, installed the game using catalyst 4.12 drivers 2004(best driver I found for civ4) and this ran with no problems even though the game indicated the 1st time the driver didn't support directx 9c, go figure. Decided to try the newer driver with the betas to see what would happen.

Good luck
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Your power supply could be failing, or it could be a bad BIOS setting. Both are common and hard to diagnose problems. The game shouldn't cause your pc to restart, period. If you're getting a restart, it points to a hardware issue.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the responses all. In order of the questions:

A) I don't overclock anything, I prefer stability over speed just for the sake of longevity
B) Just tried with hardware mouse cursor on (already had AA off and changing throttling setting). Game ran fine for about an hour then another lock.
C) I've tried altering some BIOS settings like AGP aperture size and fast writes to no avail. But just to clear it up I don't seem to be crashing the windows kernel, it seems to be locking up the video driver (going by the fact that sometimes the VPU auto-restore will kick in and the game will continue like nothing happened). It doesn't BSOD or restart on it's own.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi again,
Just noticed on rereading your initial message that you actually lose signal to monitor which was not occuring on my lockups. Have you tried stress testing the video with say 3dmark or something similar for a few hours? I have seen such things in the past but usually due to hardware, faulty video cards and poor quality psu's.; the stress test should trigger the problem if hardware. Recently, though I had a pc that would bsod or lose signal randomly, turned out is was norton symevnt causing the problem, so you just never know.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Further to your problem I was looking at a hardware forum on 9800's pros & xt (there is 1 thread that has been running for 4 years) and a number of people found that simply changing the agp from 8x to 4x eliminated lockups. Sometimes they also turned off fast writes and agp 3 compliance. It was also noted that this card can really draw power when being worked and for some the solution was a new high quality psu.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hmmm. I appear to be getting the same problem.

However, 80% of the technical stuff you all are suggesting is, well, not my specialty. Now, if you need a sewer designed....

Anyways,any and all help is appreciated.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi God King,
You need to 1st post your debug.err located in the galciv2 folder as this can give some ideas(open the file in notepad then cut & paste into your post.) Posting the debug.err will show what hardware and settings you are using and can allow people to make more informed recommendations.

Also is your computer completely locking up like negadeath with the monitor going black with lose of signal? If not you should start a new thread. If you are ctod(crashing to desktop) or bsod(blue screen of death) then consider downloading smartexception from stardock central free stuff and letting it run in the background to see if it will detect more details.

Some basic things to try in the games options under video is turn antialiasing off, leave throttle on.