The Explanation and Cures to roughly 80% of CTD's!

[Bumdark 3]

^{_{First of all, before the actual message, I wish to say that if any Mods or Admins find this solution thread to be unnecessary or otherwise unwanted, feel free to delete it. (I don't really need to say that, do I...?) I originally planned to put this in the "Bugs and Technical Issues" category, but more people come to the General Discussion instead, so this will help more people than otherwise. If you wish, please send it there instead...}}Now, for the actual solution(s)!

Please note that this thread is for most types of CTD's, yet there will always be the odd CTD that isn't fixed by this. I've tested these methods on several PC's, and roughly 80% of them didn't CTD again. (Of course, SC4 is itself full of small glitches, and occasionally you may see your game CTD unexpectedly and without explanation. If it happened just that one time, and never again, then it was just a bug, so just save next time before it could happen again.

This solution thread is seperated in 3 sections: the Symptoms, the Cause, and the Solution.

---

Symptoms
^{How to distinguish CTD's from other random bugs and glitches?}

To recognize a CTD is very simple – it's actually rather difficult not to notice it, or recognize it, when it hits. All the different CTD's are rather similar, yet just for the sake of pointing them out:

1 – The game's fine, then all of a sudden it exits and you see your Desktop. No warnings, no messages, no confirmations; it just disappeared.

2 – The game's fine, then all of a sudden, it seems to freeze momentarily, with audio glitches and bugs, then you see your Desktop – once again, no warnings, to nothing.

Finally, if either of the two occured yet you think there's still a slight chance that it may not be the much hated and notorous CTD problem that plagues so many SC4 players, here's what you do to verify it is indeed the old foe.

1 – Enter the "My Documents" folder. (For inexperienced users, the My Documents folder is found either on your Desktop, or in the "My Computer" directory, which is either on the Desktop or in the Start Menu. ("My Documents" is also often found in the Start Menu.)

2 – In "My Documents", head down the following path: "SimCity 4 > Exception Reports".

3 – In this folder, you'll probably find several icons. (There will be few or none of you game works fine and doesn't crash.) There are two types of files in here: basic Text files (".txt") and MDMP (Minidump) files (".mdmp).

4 – To verify that it was indeed a typical case of CTD, check in the TEXT (".txt") files, and try to find the latest one, as the dates are inserted in their names.

5 – When you find the latest file, open it and check at the top of the text. At the end of the second line of text, there should be those soon-to-be-dreaded words: "ACCESS_VIOLATION".

If you have that particular exception, "ACCESS_VIOLATION", then we just confirmed you're a sufferer of the usual CTD's that plague us.

Cause
^{What the heck's going on? And what the heck is this "Access Violation" you just made me look up?}

There may be many reasons why SC4 CTD's, yet by far the most common and prominent – roughly 80% of CTD's, in fact – are caused by this particular error: Access Violation.

What is "Access_Violation"? Well, I could go into the technical mumbo-jumble... well, actually I couldn't, I don't know all the technical crap. But I do know what it is, what causes it and how to stop the damn thing from ever h

[Trioxis 32]

I seem to have been experiencing those CTD's but they seem to occur more frequently after I've upgraded my computer. I now have a C2D E8400 (3Ghz) and 2Gb DDR2-800 RAM while my previous rig had an AMD 64 (1.8Ghz) and 1.5Gb DDR-400 RAM. I have my pagefile set to system controlled size, so I might get more results setting it manually.

[jeronij 13]

Of course more RAM is always welcome for any operating system . However, the key for the SC4 CTD's is the number of files in your plugins folders. The more files, the more CTD. The less files, the less CTD. For windows is easier to keep a 1GB file in the RAM than having 1000x1MB files to manage in the same RAM. You can make a simple test. Pack your plugins folder with Datpacker (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=204.0) and run your game. You will notice how sparsed (and probably totally unexistent if you have a good amount of RAM 2GB or more) the CTD's are. Just a suggestion for those who cant buy a new computer

[Namesys 3]

Please help me.

I have a total of 42 text files that say i have CTD in your theory.

Well, i won't say i have the best PC but I have

2GB ram

x1950pro 256mb

E6600 C2D 2.4 Ghz

Do those specs speak that i need a new PC? I thought this freaking PC will be good enough to handle SC4 and few other games when i put all my money on it, and now i see i must buy a monster rig to even play the half decade old game without CTD errors.

I play the game on max, because it makes as much CTD errors than if I play on dry MINIMUM graphics options.

I do have a large plugin folder 1.35 GB big. I don't know why a bunch of buildings would make my computer go down.

I really need your help, so, please, help me!

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

I have 3GB ram and sc4 will run real smooth and I still randomly get these crashes. Where can I get the datapacker? I dont see a download link when I go to that url jeronij. Must I register to yet another forum for this download?

[Bumdark 3]

Namesys: For the most part, your PC's better than mine! No, those specs don't say you need a new one - I meant, to need to buy a new PC, you'd need some awful, 10-year-old crap like 600 MHz CPU speed and 250 MB RAM... Your specs are more than good enough to handle most of SC4.

However, I see your Plugins is roughly 1.35 GB... Hang on, picking my jaw off the floor... OF COURSE that will bug the game up!

You see, whenever the game launches, it scans your Plugins folder and takes into memory every single file in there, whether they be DAT files, SC4 files, TXT, etc. Therefore, the more files it takes, the slower it goes, as it has need for much more memory... 1.35 is a very, very big Plugins folder. I've got a few solutions for you:

1 - Clean out all the unnecessary files in there, meaning all the files that aren't needed for the game. This includes pics (JPEG, BMP, etc.), Text files, etc. Believe me, this would free up more than half of the space, most of the time. It did with me.

2 - Use the DatPacker to compress and place all these files into a single DAT file. This way, though it's still technically all the same files, they're all in one bundle. It's like having either 100 pennies or a dollar, which is much easier to manage... get the idea? The game will read this MUCH faster, and bugs will almost disappear. (At least, they should.)

That's all for your Plugins... I would also recommend the Cleanitol tool, but I don't have it and have no idea how to use it yet (I plan to soon, however), so can't help you on that one.

BTW... 42 text files? Please confirm these are indeed "ACCESS_VIOLATION" files? Just open them up, second line down, at the end. If they are said error, then that's that. If they're something else, then I'm afraid I can't help you as I've never experienced anything else myself.

I think this should tide you over for now... Be sure to send feedback!

northsider1983: Roughly 3 Gigs of RAM, still some crashes? If this is still an "ACCESS_VIOLATION" problem, then try to cancel some unneeded background tasks, or any other programs you don't absolutely need. Af for the DatPacker, it's only available at SimCityDevotion, and yes, you do need to register there. In fact, you must register BOTH for the regular site AND for the exchange... seems pointless to register two times, but it doesn't matter, the content is so GOOD!

Anyone else need help, I beg you to send thy requests in!

[Jetsurf2002 0]

that's what I did.... I went through my plugins and took out everything I didn;t want or use, it used to be 1gb of files that I didn't realize were there. I decreased the size of the plugins folder and I increased the amount of my page file to like 5GB cause I have plenty of room on my hard drive for it. haha. It hasn't crashed since... this is funny since I did this before I came across this thread, so I agree that it does work.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

For people who are experiencing crashing problems and they have a Core 2 Duo or other dual-core processor:

If your game is repeatedly crashing for that reason, it may be because CPU 0 [which everything uses by default] is getting overloaded. So, you have to switch SC4's core affinity to CPU 1, and set the priority to Above Normal. This will make sure the game won't crash repeatedly. It may still crash occasionally, but that's mainly due to the Access Violation error.

To change the game's Core Affinity:

Start up SC4. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc [this will bring up Task Manager]. Now, SC4 should be running at the time. If you're in the Applications tab, go to Processes and look for SimCity4.exe. Right click on it and go to Set Affinity... Uncheck CPU0. Save the settings. Then, right click on the .exe file and go to Set Priority. Change the Priority to Above Normal. [this will allow CPU1 to still be used if so required]

It should fix some of your crashing problems... SC4 knows there is a second core there, but it's not designed to use it. This will free up the main core for more important things [such as browsing the 'Net , or Photoshop.]

[Godzillaman 21]

Originally posted by: Shadow_Assassin more important things [such as browsing the 'Net .]quote>

We can only guess...

I used the dat packer and the cleanitol and they seemed to help with the crashes...

[Namesys 3]

Bumdark,

wow, thanks alot for explanation.

I did thought a bit that CTD doesn't happen just because of PC being over-loaded. It happens when, I try to click the "parks" area, or "landmark" area. This happened 80% of all the crashes. Oh yeah, and all of those 42 errors are all Access_violation.

And thank you to inform me to clear up the plugin folder. I'm doing it right now (from 1.35 to 1.0 ATM) and it's a pain

Thanks all,

p.s. i thought cleanitol is only for .txt files when i download a certain pack, to see if i'm alright with dependencies and what files i shouldn't have in Plugin folder if i move the downloaded files in.

[Bumdark 3]

Good for you, Namesys. CTD's when opening menus... hmph, never heard of that one before. And thanks for the confirmation.

Agreed, it's one hell of a pain in the arse, but I think you can see it's working, right?

I think you have it basically right for the Cleanitol, but just to be sure: the Cleanitol is basically a simple yet effective program. Whenever you download any BATs, most of them by now will come with .txt files that describe a bunch of files and whatnot. You input this text into the Cleanitol, and it basically deletes and removes any duplicate files, or outdated, unneeded files. Simple as that.

[Namesys 3]

Ok then. I reduced the plugin folder to 300 mb. Is that safe then?

I tryed now to play without plugin folder at all and almost forgot how fast it loads from desktop into the game. Incredible heh, but very, very plain. I'll have those very essential 300mb of plugins, i hope it won't hurt as intensive as it once did.

[fern244 1]

Thanks guys, this is great help!

[DuskTrooper 314]

Most of my CTDs seem to occur either due to the obvious (faulty plugins/missing plugins/conflicting plugins, etc), or when using the "save and exit to region" feature. This seems to use up more RAM, causing an access violation error, and has caused many grave losses when saving larger cities (although, thankfully, I back up on a schedule, which softens the blow slightly). A simple solution to this, if anyone else experiences it, is to save by pressing ctrl+s, and THEN exiting to the region afterwards, without saving again.

Excellent topic BTW: I'm sure many folkzen will find this helpful.

[stratusmonkey 0]

In the vein of increasing your Page File / Virtual Memory / Swap space... having a fixed-size Page File. where both the minimum and maximum values are set to be the same is a Good Thing. 4096MB (4GB) may or may not be optimal depending on your configuration. People recommend some integer multiple of your RAM size, variously saying twice, three times or four times your amount of RAM. Of course, if you run out of swap space at 2x, go up to 3x and so on.

If you try to increase your swap file size, or set it to a fixed amount and Windows doesn't cooperate with the request, it's probably because you ran out of free hard drive space. Just don't delete anything you'll miss. Stuff in your Recycle Bin counts against your free hard drive space in this context. And having a disk sector overwritten for the page file makes the old data pretty much unsalvagable.

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

Shadow_Assassin, thanks I'll try that

[DragonMinded 0]

Just to weigh in, I don't think it's windows fault, but (what's been stated to death before) drivers on your pc. My old computer never once CTD'd, ever. It had 1GB ram, an old radeon card, and a slow processor. It died and I have this new shiny beast with a much better card and double the ram, and it CTD's. I thought at first it was the computer because I'd never seen it before.

I've also noticed that SimCity takes less ram than some programs that I run, yet they never CTD. When calling for more dynamic memory in a program, windows DOES NOT just shut down your program if you hit too much, but it returns a zero to mean no you can't have any more ram. It's then up to the DEVELOPER to handle this. A robust program can free other resources or quit gracefully. Access violation means that the program wrote to a bad memory region, not that it took up too much memory.

Now I know you said that you don't understand the technical aspects, but your assumptions are just plain wrong. While in most cases the solutions will fix some CTD's, this is due to luck, as well as the fact that rearranged hardware makes the symptoms go away.

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

I tried to use the that method Shadow_Assassin, and I works so far. I played for over an hour with no crashes when it usually crashes within 20 minutes. Thanks for that tip!

[Big Vine 0]

Hmm...does anyone know what it means when the exceptions error report says "ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION" on a given event?  Of the 5 exception reports I have for Simcity4, 3 are "ACCESS_VIOLATION," and the other 2 are "ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION."

BV

[Bumdark 3]

Wow, this thread's a lot hotter than I thought it would be! Glad to see people are finding help (or posting their own solutions, just as good) here!

Namesys: 300 MB is what I consider to be the average Plugins folder size, for most players out there. Therefore, it should work perfectly. Still slower than with nothing in there, but one can't expect miracles, can he?

If I may suggest, you could try "filtering" what you download (this goes to everyone who reads this BTW). I mean, by filtering, that whenever you download something, it appears in a WinZip window, right? Well, many people just extract the whole damn package into the Plugins folder. Instead, just select (trick: press Ctrl while clicking items to select them one by one) what you want and extract them instead. Saves probably twice the space, if not much more.

(Finally, filtering out your Plugins from 1.3 GBs to 0.3 – pretty impressive!)

fern244: Why, welcome!

DuskTrooper: I've never experienced CTD's per se when "Save and Exit to Region"-ing, yet something strange did happen, for a while, long ago... there was a brief spell where whenever I clicked that, the game would save fine, then Quit normally to Desktop. Not crash or anything, just as if the Button lead to the instruction "Quit and Exit the Game". Pretty strange. Has this happened to anyone else?

And thanks!

stratusmonkey: Thanks for the input!

DragonMinded: Welcome to ST, first of all.

Now, come on, I can't that wrong, really. Everything stated here I've learned word-for-word from some of the largest computer self-help sites around, and they're the experts in this thing... So you'd be saying they're wrong. Pretty sure not, myself. Of course I could have misunderstood a few things, but not everything...

While in most cases the solutions will fix some CTD's, this is due to luck...quote>

You're saying that the amount of RAM is irrelevant, and adding more of it (or Virtual Memory) is pointless, and just based on luck? Please tell me I got that wrong (which I bet I did, sorry).

Big Vine: "ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION" is the common name for what's known as an Illegal opcode, or Undocumented Instruction. I've hears the basics of this, but can't really understand even the gist of it, so the best I can do is refer you to dear ol' Wikipedia, right here.

Hope to see more in need of help! (Wow, that sounds wierd...)

And, if I may be so recklessly bold as to implement a suggestion: could a Mod or someone Pin this / make it Sticky / whatever? People actually do read this, and it would be a shame for it to float around and get lost among the other threads popping up. Just an idea.

[artoxb 0]

I have 1gb ram and a pagefile of 4gb and it still crashes...

[doodlea21 31]

Nice article! This should be in the omnibus.

[Namesys 3]

Bumdark,

If nothing else, you made some great solutions to me regarding plugins and programs around that. I know i was kind of mindless when I was downloading all those useless stuff from Lex/stex (no offence to producers) and I saw BSC folder in my plugins folder was taking a holy freaking 0.5 GB of space which ended in my recycle bin pretty fast. I also just checked programs I don't know what they really are and delete them. And yes, all the pictures and readmes and stuff along with them. I organised the folder, made it even better with datpacker you suggested and yes, game is working flawlessly, with less stuff, but those "important" still are and i don't miss nothing if i'm honest.

Game started in 10-15 seconds, which is more than 6 times better than before.

I just want to thank to you, and say that you are the best.

If nothing else, you made the largest forum post ever regarding me, and I really appreciate it.

Thanks alot Bumdark.

[Big Vine 0]

Thanks for providing the link, Bumdark.

Originally posted by: Bumdark

Big Vine: "ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION" is the common name for what's known as an Illegal opcode, or Undocumented Instruction. I've hears the basics of this, but can't really understand even the gist of it, so the best I can do is refer you to dear ol' Wikipedia, right here.quote>

I can now see why you didn't try to summarize it for me, lol. 

It will be interesting to see what the extra 2 gigs of RAM (which I just ordered) will do for my sims!  Granted, I've only had 5 of these exception error-related CTD's over my entire history of playing SC4 (according to the text logs), so hopefully the added RAM won't screw anything up in that regard.   If anything, I would think there oughta be a notable improvement in terms of game performance, since right now I've only got 512 MB of RAM.

In any event, thanks for this article, Bumdark---very helpful and informative!

BV

[Bumdark 3]

Holy heck, never had I dreamed to get this sort of recognition... it does feel good, I must add. To be able to spew my knowledge and help around...

artoxb: Then either your Plugins are abnormally large, either your cities are monsters with more residents than normally possible, or something's really hogging up all your PC's resources. Check to see if any programs or background tasks are using more than their fair share of RAM and CPU. I know Antiviruses, while essential, are quite resource-hungry. Always best to kill your Internet connection and deactivate any Anitviruses while running the game, as they're known to cause many crashes for SC4, as said in the installation manual.

Of course, it may be that you're in that 20% of CTD's that have yet to be explained... In which case I can't really help. Too bad... Hope it works out.

doodlea21: Thanks! (Though, to be frank – honesty is one of my most important ethical rules – I actually pieced most of this article together from stuff and info in the Omnibus itself... Just to sort of summarize it all, and provide people who aren't willing or able for whatever reason, to peruse this and see the quick results, for themselves. Putting this in the Omnibus would be rather cheapskate, as it's just a collection of already-present articles, plus 20% original findings... eh.)

Namesys: Glad to see it (you) fixed the problems you were experiencing... Though I've yet to experience that "6 times better than before" amelioration in my own game... *pouts*

"The best"... hell, there are others who know a heck of a lot more than I do, I assure you. I guess they just keep to themselves... But definately thanks!

Big Vine: Indeed, I've read it time and time again, yet somehow I still fail to wrap my head around the concept they're trying to explain... Though that's the problem with Wikipedia – it's written by experts, and sometimes, FOR experts... of which I am NOT!

... Wait, only 512 MB's of RAM? Dear God, how did you even manage to play the game at all!? With 2.5 GBs of RAM, be prepared for it playing like a dream... (Lucky bastard )

Keep those replies flooding in! Always more help to spread around...

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

Man, I'm still getting crashes after I tried what shadow suggested... there's no hope!

[Bumdark 3]

*Violently slaps northsider1983* NEVER say that! There's always hope... oh, who are we kidding...?

I guess you're just part of the roughly 20% of CTD's that aren't caused by RAM-related stuff. Use the division method to see if it's any of your Plugins that are causing trouble (if you don't know what the "Division Method" is, reply so I can explain), check your settings, Rollback on your drivers... etc. Could be just about absolutely anything in that piece of complex crap we call a PC.

Sorry...

[EnochHeath 0]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. One question... Will increasing the page file size help my computer and it's day to day running generally? If so, why doesn't windows have big page files as standard?

[milter 0]

I would not recomend using a page file unless you really have to! I have 2 GB RAM on a XP (means the OS don't take as much as Vista), so I've got plenty of room for SC4. I don't use a pagefile since that SLOWS everything and mess up your Harddrive. When i see a CTD while monitoring my RAM usage, I see that the maximum usage ever was around 1,4GB. So even with a pagefile I would not have saved the CTD.

My point is this: If you have 2GB+ RAM a page file will most likely only slow things down. So tjeck to see if you really need that. The case is that your CTD, like mine, is not caused by lack of memory.

[SC4BOY 21]

That depends on how much other material you are running.. the swap file (or whatever you wish to call it.. virtual memory, etc) is only used when there is inadequate memory.. and not having a swap file can only penalize you (unless you run a very limited setup).. Personally I have over 2 meg of mem, but I also run sc4 in a window and IE open to many pages onlinie and various background and monitoring programs.. and that doesn't even count the system programs running.. Plus I often run other programs without shuting sc4 down.. and it doesn't slow the pc down at all.. if it isn't needed, it isn't used.. soooo... but hey.. do as you like.. its just that by advising others to follow your bad example, you may be causing them problems whether you have any or not..