What's your debug.err say?

It's in the GalCiv directory.

THis is definatly a regestry problem...unfortunatly, I know little about this area   We'll chat with the SDCentral guys and see what could fix this.

Let's ignore the multimedia and take this in steps.

Do what post #10 indicated and remove those directories. As well as gc2*.* in \program files\stardock\sdcentral\installed.

Reboot. Everything all gone? It's like you've never had GalCiv2 (apart from having Stardock Central installed).

Install only the base GalCiv2 0.81 build (not the multimedia). Let the install complete. Before you attempt to run the game, zip up \program files\stardock\sdcentral\installed\gc2.log and gc2.xml. Set the zip aside for later.

Now we're going to make a directory listing of everything that's in the installed directory. Start / Run / Cmd.exe

cd "\program files\stardock\totalgaming\galciv2"

dir *.* /s >> c:\mygc2_install.txt

One more step before running the game: Install and run SmartException from http://storage.stardock.com/files/smartexception.exe. This will attempt to capture additional information if something crashes.

At this point, you can go ahead and attempt to run the game. Describe things like you did above, do you ever get the intro movie or to the main menu or does it go dark and crash immediately?

Go into \program files\stardock\smartexception and see if there are a couple of galciv2.exe.* files. If there are, attach them to an email. Also include the debug.err from the galciv2 directory, the c:\mygc2_install.txt, and the zip file you created earlier with the files from sdcentral\installed.

Note in the email what happens (dark screen, crash, etc) and send those files to kwilas@stardock.com and bharper@stardock.com, please.

Kris

Other relevant questions: what are your monitor/monitors if appropriate.

And does running 'galciv2.exe w' from the command line in the galciv2 directory allow the game to load?

Kris

Mjanz2k, your problem appears to be distinct from the one jakanc and sltdg are reporting. In looking at your info above, your video drivers are more than 2 years old. Please update those and then try again.

If it persists in lagging/looping on load, edit the prefs.ini in my documents\my games\galciv2 to disable the sound (change sfx=1 and music=1 to =0). Please make sure your sound drivers are updated as well.

And try the 'galciv2.exe w' to see if running it in a window is different.

Kris