Need help!!!!!! - GalCiv II crashes after setting up

from GalCiv2 Forums
For all those who respond with helpful ideas - thanks! I just bought GalCiv II (been a GalCiv fan the past couple of years), loaded it, and it crashed on the Stardock credits. Fortunately I saw the website and loaded the 1.11 patch, hoping it would resolve the memory issue. Partly successful - I'm able to get all the way through setting up a game, including setting options, but as soon as I try to play the game it crashes. I've tried optimizing the memory the best I can, but the last option I want to do is uninstall my Norton Antivirus (by the way, it's inactive when I play the game). I'm using a Pentium 4, 1.5~Mhz with all the available RAM. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do? I've been looking forward to a better version of this game for some time, and I don't want to take this back to the store! Thanks for any help. Panzergeneral
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Try these steps one at a time:

1)  Update your video drivers with a clean install. 
 a) Download the new drivers from your video card manufacturer's website. Usually www.nvidia.com, www.ati.com or www.intel.com. 
 b)  Un-install the old drivers and reboot
 c) Cancel the Found New Hardware wizard when you log back into Windows
 d)  Install the new drivers that you downloaded
 
If you have the most updated drivers but you did not do a clean install when you updated, you may want to re-install your drivers using the method above.
 
2)  Update your sound drivers.

3) Update to the latest version of Gal Civ 2.

4) Install Smart Exception from the Free Stuff tab in Stardock Central. This generates a crash report when GC2 crashes (unless the computer has locked up or reboots itself) which is useful to us in determining where the crash is occurring.  We will also want your debug.err file.  If you are constantly getting crashes and you need help from a support tech, e-mail [email protected].  Otherwise, e-mail the crash log and the debug.err file to [email protected].  If you have a save game that consistently crashes within a set amount of turns, send that in as well, but you will probably need to zip it.

5) Go to the advanced tab of your display properties and find the Direct3D settings.

 a) Set Antialiasing to be Application Controlled
 b) Set AnsioTropic filtering to be Appliation Controlled
 c) Set Image Settings to be Quality

6) Make sure that your desktop resolution is at least 1024 x 768 at 32 bit color. You may want to try higher resolutions if your video card and monitor support them, but you always want to be at 32 bit color, and the game resolution should never be higher than the desktop resolution.

7) In your My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2 folder, there is a prefs.ini file. You can change the video settings there.

 a) Set Multisample = 0 to disable anti-aliasing, particularly if you have an error in your debug.err file about failing to create a device.
 b) Set HardwareMouseCursor = 1
 c) Set Fullscreen = 0 to run in a window.  If the game resolution is the same size as the desktop resolution, it will still appear to be fullscreen.
 d) If your crashing is occurring after the intro, try setting SkipIntro=1

8) Check to see what codecs you have installed. Many media player programs like WinDVD or Media Portal install codecs on your system and they don't always play nice with other programs.   To see what codecs are installed on your system:

9) Turn off all the music and sfx in the game.  You may also want to try disabling your sound card.  If this works, there may be some issue with your sound driver that un-installing the codecs didn't fix.  You may need to re-install your sound drivers after having un-installed your codecs, or you may be able to fix the problem by changing your audio acceleration.

 a) Right click on the My Computer icon and select properties.
 b) Click on the hardware tab
 c) Click on the Device Manager button. 
 d) Right click on Audio Codecs and choose properties. The properties tab of the dialog that comes up will list and allow you to remove the audio codecs installed on your computer.    e) You can follow the same steps for the Video Codecs. 
 f) There are instructions in this MSDN article for re-installing the Windows audio and video codecs:

 http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;893681&spid=1007&sid=1498#EUADAAA

10) Run dxdiag and the Direct3D and DirectSound tests to make sure that there is nothing wrong that DirectX can detect

 a) Click on your windows start button
 b) Click on Run
 c) type the word dxdiag in the dialog box and click OK.
 d) Allow it to check to see if your drivers are digitally signed, let it run its tests
 e) Run the Direct3D and DirectSound tests.
 f) Click Save all information and save the file somewhere you'll be able to find it.

 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Why even ask for help if you are too lazy to go through the steps?
Here is an easy one. Post the contents of your debug.err file, found in your main game folder - usually C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2.
You can open the file with Notepad and copy/paste the contents in the post.

That might give a clue as to why you are having problems. It could be as simple as trying to play the game at a resolution that is different from your desktop resolution.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, I agree with #4. This "My oil comes with my car" mentality is ridiculous. If your computer isn't good enough, don't expect the game to work. And don't say it is. If you're too lazy to update the damn drivers, I really won't believe a word you say about your system.

This is a fairly low spec game, that needs just a few things to run. The above would probably take me about an hour to do, maybe a bit more if I wen't for coffee. And odds are it's the driver issue.

If you can't be arsed to do anything? why bother posting? A post with criticism and ignoring any helpful comments? That's what we call trolling!