Crashes (Two Different Ones)

[BestServedCold 0]

OK, guys. New to this forum. Hadn't played SimCity4 in a while but was bored this week and was going through my old game stack.

The game has crashed on me at least 6 times. 4 of those, it just crashed right to the desktop almost instantly. The game was completely closed out but my PC worked normally. The other two times,the game hung for a few seconds. One of those two times, the sound stuttered for the duration of the hang. Then after 15-30 seconds... crash to desktop. That was the only time I was playing Windows Media Player, listening to music in the background.

My PC is fairly new (3-4 months)

It is an 

Intel E6700 Core2 Duo processor

Nvidia 8800GTX

Vista Home Premium 32

2 or 4 gigs RAM (can't remember)

The version of the game I have is the big box Deluxe Edition. The game crashed unpatched. It then crashed after I patched it at the official site. It then crashed after I installed that SKU1 thing. 

I have not added any mods or altered the game in any way.

I run other games just fine.

The first couple of times I crashed, I blamed Vista. Then I came here and read someone saying to run in Windows Compatibility mode. I did that. No good. Then I right clicked the game to open it and ran it as an administrator. No good. Then I checked under properties "Always Run This as Administrator" or whatever it says... That seemed to help a little although it may be coincidence.

Until I did that, my cities crashed with populations of 70-90,000 people. This last time, I got to 150,000 before crashing.

I had not run an antivirus program in the entire time I owned the PC (stupid I know...). Today I went and bought Norton 360. No virus.

I have defragged my hard drive.

I set the swap file to 4096 or whatever just now following you guys' instructions but I doubt that will help because the swap file was already set to close to that (3800 or so).

I would be glad to tell you guys whatever you need to know about my exception reports or dumps or whatever. The game has crashed at least six times as I said and there are only two of them. You guys will need to tell me what you need to know off these reports as I don't want to post the entire things.

I'm fairly *****ish guys so speak sllloooowly.

And thanks in advance to anyone who tries to help.

[JakeMD 107]

You know what? I tell this to everyone, but try re-installing the game, there is probably a major bug somewhere in the install! You dont have to get rid of your cities/regions, Just put them aside and add them back to the regions folder once your done with the reinstall.

Hope that works, good luck, have fun, be safe, and most of all, dont punch your computer!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Just to be sure you get this right:

1. Save your Documents\SimCity4\Regions folder to your desktop with a different name.
2. Save your Documents\Simcity4\plugins folder to your desktop with yet a different name
3. Uninstall the game completely.
4. Run Disk Cleanup (System Tools menu) on your hard disk.
5. Run Disk Defragmenter on your hard disk
6. Restart your machine
7. Install the game as follows:
   1. Install deluxe
   2. go to the SC4 home site and install Update 1.  No further patching.
8. Restore the two folders you saved in 1 and 2 to their proper spots

You should now have a running game. 

If you want the night lights patch for BAT buildings get it from the thread in General titled "Get your maxis files here".  You may want some of the others as well.

The selection of the proper patch file with Update 1 is automatic.  No further interaction with the home site should be needed.

... And welcome to Simtropolis.  We hope you enjoy your membership here.

[tungston 19]

Bestservedcold: If you cities are getting to 90K populations before crashing, then you just need to save more often. That just seems to be a short coming of the game.

If it is crashing before you load a city, that is not normal.

[bo1777 0]

i would be suspisous of any plugins you used just before the game started crashing.some plugins can be placed succesfully,but the city wont load again after exiting.