Frozen and Frustrated

I can relate to how you feel. I am working with the same problem. Have you installed SmartException? It took me a while to figure out, but I am now submitting my SmartException log, my debug.err file, and my game save to the stardock developers. I'll bet that if enough of us submit evidence of the same problem, stardock with do something about it. Those of us using vista on dual core processors with nvidia cards are on the "bleeding edge" of technology, unfortunately.

Didn't you guy here the new... It turns out Vista is a faulty window system, like Windows ME or 2000. Vista might be playing up.

Please go to C:\Program Files\Stardock\Totalgaming\GalCiv2 (or wherever you installed the game at), open the debug.err file you find there in notepad, and copy/paste the contents into a post here. If this is a DA report, you'll find the debug in C:\Program Files\Stardock\Totalgaming\GalCiv2\DarkAvatar instead. This will give us some technical information that can help troubleshoot your problem.

Be sure to copy the debug immediately after the error occurs; if you start the game again, the debug will be erased and recreated for the new session.

FYI, I have the same problem on XP (see Game Lock Up thread) so it is not isolated to Vista. Also, Version 1.6 Beta 1 did not solve the issue. But I'm confident the problem will be eventually found and solved.

i get the problem a lot if i use the options of abundant planets and abundant habital planets but not as much if i use a option that uses less planets and less habital ones just an observation

Its not just vista thats freezing, i have wondows xp service pack2 and have same problems of freezing, am running 1.6beta version, have turned off autosave cause that causes almost no crashes to desktop, but this degbug.err is for a freeze when i finished researching a tech the window popped up to show me i was finished and when i clicked done it froze, only the cursor was allowed to move but nothing else worked, had to kill power to comp to reboot.

LOL, it wont let me paste my debug here?

Hmmm, I've searched in all the galciv2 and Dark avatar folders and there is no bug report or debug.err file. I've installed beta 1.6 and no change.

I'm not sitting at my vista machine right now, so I can't tell you the exact directory to search, but if I recall correctly, I seem to have found the debug.err doc, the exceptionlog.zip, and my game saves deep in my "documents" and "local apps" directories (not under ...\program files\...). These locations are different from what folks have been saying here on the boards. I guess vista is just that different.

Still can't find the debug.err file anywhere. I tried downloading the modded drivers from laptogo2video.com but still having issues. I've searched my computer for anything with the word debug in it and nothing shows. This is ridiculous, I can't even uninstall the game. Did they not put a uninstall function in the game??

You may need to run the game under an administrator account in order for the game to be able to write one. If you run under a regular account it will not be able to write to the game's folder by default.