Download the latest graphics driver for your graphics card!!!

Thanks Solitair! I'll try this tonight and hope it fixes my CTD on new game creation.

FYI that the latest ATI driver is dated March 9th, 2005 (couple weeks ago).

i'm having no problem with the intel extreme 2 chipset and the latest drivers - which might be a relief to many a laptop user

Good advice, I didn't realize there was such a new driver out.

I have the latest Intel Extreme drivers on now, but I thought it worth mentioning that you have to be very careful to follow ALL of the instructions. I missed the final one the first time and did not get it installed.

I have seen some other posts that look like other people may have had similar difficulties when updating their drivers.

I have it running on my ThinkPad X40 laptop which has Intel integrated video. No problems so far.

But i will say that on older intel video chipsets the game won't work nor will it ever work on those.

Great advice! I was having all sorts of problems with basic things in the beta (like moving a ship). When I saw this post about new drivers, I didn't realize new ones had been released. I installed the new drivers and it corrected all my problems. Even ones I didn't think could be graphics card related. Thanks again Paul!

Rex

I had a CTD when colonizing.
Installed the latest drivers and cured it.

Now with the updated Beta the problem is back again.

I had problems before but got excellent help from Cari, pointing me to a site where one could get updated modified drivers for ATI cards. The drivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/ worked for my laptop och now I can run and play the beta.

The only drawback is that the drivers are not supported by my laptop manufacturer and that I do not seem to be able to use the TV-out. But both of those are of no major concern to me. (YMMV)

Posting my stats in case anyone wants to try the same.

Laptop model: ASUS L3800C
Graphic card: ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (32 MB dedicated video memory)
CPU: P4 M 2Ghz
Memory: 512 MB
DirectX: 9.0c

All latest patches from Microsoft.

The drivers work on my Compaq Presario 2700 (3 year old) with ATI Radeon Mobile M6 (one of the oldest).

I have noticed some instability, though. Occasional blue screens upon boot. I installed a lot of software at the time so the drivers might not be at fault, but I doubt it.

I would advice you to backup before installing.

I updated the driver for my own ATI modbile Radeon 7500 from that link. The results are: The driver can be installed, contrary to all the official ones even when doing all kinds of uninstall/reboot stuff. The game now runs. Another game (Dominions II) has some slowness and problems in displaying 3D - but then it uses OpenGL and not DirectX-. And the computer sometimes stops dead. I think, but may be wrong, it's due to overheating (which may come from overclocking). Overall, it's quite stable. The minor glitches playing Dom II are compensated by the possibility to test GC II.

good

Well I am not willing to download any driver not approved by Dell.

Dell has not updated the Drivers for my laptop in ages.

I have a Dell laptop and ran into lockup problems if I didn't use their drivers. Unfortunately, as you noted, Dell does not update their laptop drivers once they're deemed to be stable enough. Luckily OmegaDrivers are updated regularly and have worked perfectly with my Dell laptop. If you want to update your drivers, you may want to give them a try.

I've always wondered how Dell got away with such low prices. I guess this is one of the reasons.

Well, buying in huge volumes helps too.

But i will say that on older intel video chipsets the game won't work nor will it ever work on those.

Out of a perverse sense of experimentation, I tried running GalCiv2 on an ancient toshiba laptop (pentium mmx 233mhz, S3-Virge video, Win98SE/DirectX9.0c). Heh, just pounding things with a big stick ya know?

The result was that GCConfig crashed to desktop with an invalid page fault (0167:0041b8ce) and GalCiv2 displayed a black screen of nothing.

My guess is that a GPU is required, and without hardware T&L the instructions simply didn't make sense. I had thought that's what the Hardware Emulation Layer was all about; apparently that concept didn't last where it counts.

Anyway, a suggestion: Have some sort of pretest on the hardware, instead of just crashing. A pop-up that says "This computer doesn't support [insert needed item]" or some such would be a more elegant way to exit than saying "hardware requirements on the box: buyer beware".

to my knowledge GCII doesn't require hardware T & L - otherwise my little intel exteme 2 chip would be stuffed! the beta is working pretty well on my little laptop. I think the key requirement is DirectX 9 hardware compatibility - i doubt if an S3 chipset has it.

AngleWyrm, that sounds more like a driver issue to me.  If even the gcconfig program is crashing on load, it's extremely not compatible.

what version of direct x do you need, game keeps crashing to desktop after I download the beta, I have a dell inspiron 1100, will i need to update drivers also?

I think you need DirectX 9c.

latest graphics card driver

I found the latest NVIDIA display driver to be 8.1.9.5, 2005/11/11, not 2005/03/11 as reported above.

There are no more OmegaDrivers for Win98SE. Is it possible to get GC2 run on a Win98SE machine with a Radeon 9250 (the 128Bit / 128MB version)?

On the ATI side the newest version is Catalyst® Version 5.9 which I already got.

Is there any test I can perform to make sure that tha game will run?