POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Random crashes

Look herein

from GalCiv2 Forums

For people with 1.0X that are experience random CTDs, we think we know the cause.

We've now had two cases where we've worked with someone on this and in both cases it turned out they either had a very small page file (low virtual memory) or had turned off a page file entire.

During the autosave, a virtual copy of the game is created which temporarily increases how much memory the game uses.  For most people, that's meaningless.  But for people with little or not virtual memory, the result is a crash. 

Check your virtual memory settings.  You can do that by right-clicking on my computer, go to properties, click on the advanced tab, click on the performance settings, ciick on advanced, click on the change button in virtual memory.  Make sure your virtual memory is set to at least 2 Gigs.  The game won't use all that of course or anywhere near but we have found that those who run into this almost always have either no page file or very low memory.

6,025 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thank you ver much for trying, Brad, I really apreciate it!

But I already have about 2 Gigs of page file and 1.5 Gigs of RAM. It'll try increasing the page file to 4 Gigs and see if that helps.

But thanks alot again!
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

That probably won't do it.

But try this:

https://www.galciv2.com/latestbuild

Run it with the debug parameter (c:/>galciv2 debug) and post the debug.err here and I'll check it out.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's weird...

I discovered that I had 81.95 version of the Nvidia drivers instead of the 81.98 drivers (about a month between the releases), so I installed the newer ones and increased the page file to 4 Gigs, and then I reloaded an older save game and it crashed again.

And based on what you said here, I started a new game with the "debug" option on and just messed around with it for about 10 minutes. No crash. I rubbed my eyes, and said to myself: "that must be because I only have 1 colony or something". I started a new game, gigantic universe and abundant habitable stars and planets, and I played for about 30 minutes (couldn't help it, those Snathi's are CUTE! ), and no crash. I don't want to jinx it, but maybe the crashes went away? I couldn't replicate the crashes. With my luck, because I just reported this, the second I'll return to the game the crashes will continue...

Anyway, I have no idea what fixed it. The 4 Gigs page file, the newer drivers or the "debug" option (I'm leaving this ON! I don't care! ), but it seems my problem is solved or at least lessened quite a bit (or so I hope).

Thanks alot! You rock!
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
well, crap. I had high hopes that this was causing both the constant failure of game initiation AND the less frequent in-game CTDs... haha, no.

Ok, so I'm running (well, trying to) the game at variously 1280x1024, or 1024x768, both in-game (through prefs.ini) AND by changing my desktop. I've tried fullscreen AND windowed (through both prefs.ini AND changing target command). I've tried skip intro or not. I've re-downloaded and re-installed the latest Invidia drivers. I've, of course, downloaded both game updates, including the magical one that helps my fairly nice video card destroy itself through overwork. And finally, I've tried upping my page files to 4GBs. And I've hopefully tried every combination of all the variables above...

The fact remains that GCII has only ever properly initialized three times, CTD all three of those times for reasons unknown after working perfectly for an hour or so; has initialized fully only to CTD while trying to go to the main galaxy screen many times; but has otherwise totally failed to open and always "caused a problem and needs to close" (AppName: galciv2.exe AppVer: 1.0.0.1 ModName: unknown ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 0012a8e8 Code: 0x0000005 Flags: 0x00000000 Record: 0x0000000000000000 Address: 0x000000000012a8e8), sometimes after going to a black screen, sometimes without even blinking.

I am extremely tired of trying to make this high-maintenance game work (or open), and am about ready to turn off the computer and start dreaming of the MOOIV release. The most maddening part is that the game has worked great a few times and I can tell it's a fantastic game. Why would you program it to make sure it "takes advantage" of 110% of video resources, no matter how great those resources are? That seems like a dumb approach that just asks for trouble. That said, I don't regret my purchase, but I'm also upset that I haven't received a response to my initial request for help for four days now (VZE-631177). I completely understand that the devs are extremely busy and tired trying to make everyone happy and to provide prompt game updates, but for the most part it seems these updates are geared towards inane-bulls**t updates regarding very very minor bugs (my apologies to those who are going crazy because their ship designs aren't re-loaded with 100% accuracy, or whatever else. At least you got to actually spend time worrying about that crap in the first place).

Anyway, not trying to offend anybody, but I'm just frustrated by the slow response, the same error message appearing 8,000 times, and, most of all, the complete inconsistency of the problems/solutions I've had to attempt.

If anyone has any advice they can give me, beyond "are you sure you're running 32-bit?", I would really really appreciate it.... for know, I'll try this latest build version and see what happens...
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ugh...That's rough

I'm sorry that it didn't work out for you. I guess it depends on many factors. Well, Stardock is certainly not Blizzard, what can you do...I know, I'm allowing myself to talk this way just because MY problem was solved, and it's unfair. I understand your frustration, I hope I had more to help. Maybe in future patches the show-stopping bugs will be gone for more and more people. By the way, Morrowind had the same problem on my older systems. It kept crashing every fifteen minutes, no matter what I tried to do. I now have a newer system and Morrowind never crashed on it even a single time. And no, I'm certainly not suggesting that you'll buy a new PC for GalCiv2, I just sympathize.

This really worked, by the way. I just had my ass handed to me by the Korx, and had a blast, without a hint of a crash. 4X heaven. Many thanks, again.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I'll just quote what i just wrote again:

Run it with the debug parameter (c:/>galciv2 debug) and post the debug.err here and I'll check it out.

The game's not high maintainence. I have basically lived on these forums for the past two weeks and every single serious issue I've seen as boiled down to drivers drivers drivers.

See this thread:

https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=274&AID=105107

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have posted before about my random crashes. Anyway, I upgraded my video card and it increased my play time from one hour average to three hours average. Also, I bet a lot of the people who are having random crashes with galciv2 would also have random crashes with galciv1. I have both and they both crash randomly so something in the code of both of those games has a problem. I should mention of course that no other games give me any problems.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Follow up post here. Looks like it is working fine, I'll keep my fingers crossed of course. Before I had my video card set to the highest settings, it is an nvidia geforce 6600 with 256mb and I changed it so that the program sets everything. It seems to work now. I should mention that my previous video card was an ATI 9000 all-in wonder. I havent tried galciv1 again but I bet it will work now. I do however get strange artifacts when playing, white lines appear randomly, even on the title screen but no crashes yet so I happy.