Random shut downs?

[AnCadre 0]

Hey everyone, I don't get why my SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is randomly shutting down...its been happening for a few times now. I'm just in the middle of working a city, the whole screen goes black and I'm back onto the desktop, nothing saved, no icon. And no, there is no SIMCITY 4 on the taskbar. What gives?

I have an two Intel Pentium 4 CPUs with 3.0 GHz, and 1 GB of RAM. Isn't that WAY above the requirements, and above even recommended settings?

HELP!

[dadyrghluv 8]

i believe its a dual core issue, considering thats what u have. SC4 doesnt like dual core, set your proc to affinity when running SC4 and see what happens. it's either this or a plugins problem. remove plugins and see what happens, just dont save the city when finished until after your plugins folder is back in.

[AnCadre 0]

The only plugins I have are the 4 billion a month park, the air purfication plant and a reverse osmosis water treatment plant. Any known bugs in those?

Or...how do you turn the processor ot affinity?

[dadyrghluv 8]

there is a section i believe in the forum's on this. if however u cant find it, just search the forums for "dual proccesor" u should come up with something. i personaly don't know how to change it, but i have seen prior posts on how to in this section of the forums. goodluck.

BTW: i have the same park and water treatment u do, so this is not the issue. however there is no way of telling if downloads play well with eachother except for trial and error. just keep track of where u put it in your plugins folder, i suggest making a folder with the name "Test" on it. if all go's well them move to proper place in plugins and keep it organized. thats the best tip i can give u.

[jeronij 13]

Does it happen when you zoom out ?

[AnCadre 0]

I don't really know if the city size has anything to do with it YET, it crashes at 150'000, or 40'000 population (with subsequent Industrial and Commercial districts) It does anytime it wants.

I have the nVidia GeForce 6600 with 256 MB of Dedicated RAM. It should be WAY enough to play it.

I never paid attention to if it happens when I zoom out. But whenever I play U-Drive-It, it is slow (kinda jolts, and lags every 5 seconds).

I don't think there is routine where it crashes, because sometimes when I'm placing police stations, or getting ready to dispatch a fire truck, etc. etc.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The regular interrupt on the UDI missions indicates something is periodically doing something in your system.  Try disconnecting from the internet and closing your anti-virus.  If you have any other monitoring programs, close them as well.  Some graphics systems are very sensitive to being interrupted while they are actually drawing something. 

Also, make sure that any advanced graphics options are set to "application selected".  SC4 does not even like anti-aliasing.

To set your processor affinity, you can use the task manager.  Look in your system help files under "processor affinity".  There is a utility availalble from microsoft to set it when the program starts.  Otherwise, you have to start the program and then set it.

[Aurabolt12 0]

Your problem is definitely the dual core. I have the laptop in my sig, and it crashes EVERY time when I don't switch Sim City 4.exe's affinity to only one CPU. On your region view screen, press the Windows key, then bring up task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and right-click SC4.exe > Affinity... > and uncheck ONE of the CPUs. When the game uses all of your first CPU, it tries to use the second, and Sim City 4 can't handle that. Works for me 100% of the time!

[AnCadre 0]

i tried setting any program on affinity just to familirize myself with it, and it says "CPU 0" and CPU "1". is CPU 0 a CPU, or nothing?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Like many things in the computer world, zero (0) is considered the first number.  CPU-0 is the first cpu recognized on your machine.  If you had a quad core you would have CPU-0, CPU-1, CPU-2, and CPU-3.

Remember, machines are stupid, but they can count.  They always start at zero.  E.g.

0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010 (this is binary, as the box counts)  In human terms

0, 1,  2,   3,   4,      5,     6,      7,      8,        9,        10 (or A if you are hexadecimal, but that's another story)

[AnCadre 0]

Okay. Thanks for the advice.

I just tried setting the processor to CPU 0 only, and I didn't notice anything different in the game, it didn't crash, but my game doesn't crash every time, but it made the whole game laggier. Any suggestions on why?

[dadyrghluv 8]

i would think due to the fact your only running one proc now, and is relying more on your RAM to compensate the loss of speed. depending on the speed of your RAM which is either 333 or 400mhz which is considered the norm these days. if it was higher u might see a bump in speed and less laggieness.

[bdbys2 0]

well to all who think it is a dual core or plugin problem yes it may make things worse but I have on serveral occasions tried different configurations. AMD aslo has a dual core optimizer for amd x2 processors to help sync the 2 cores together. I have even tried wiping the hard drive to nothing reinstall windows and sim city and didnt put any plugins in and it was only a matter of time before it started doing it again. I have a asus A8N SLI Premium mb, Geforece 7800 GT, 3800+ AMD X2, 1 gig corsair pc3200 and 500 watt power supply. I have run out of options with my pc. And i've had the same problem on 32 bit systems as well as regular 64 bit processor. I notice that changing affirmity to one core only prolongs the crash cuz it still happens.

[JShoota 0]

Setting my virtual memory to system managed solved all of my random crashing issues. Give it a try.

[Ferruccio 0]

I do not have a dual core, but Deluxe continues to shut itself down at random intervals. Now I find myself having to save every couple of minutes.

John, I will try the virtual memory tip.

[Ferruccio 0]

I tried running it in windowed mode, and I tried setting the virtual memory to system managed.  I am still having the random shut down issues.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

To address your problem further we need to know what you are running. 

1. What Operating System are you using? 

2. What is the hardware and software configuation of your machine? 

3. Do you have the current updates from Simcity.com? 

4. Do you have any plugins? 
   1. How large is your plugin suite, if any?