SimCity 4 Crashes with Exception (Access Violation Error)

[Cougar2004 127]

I have an original retail box install of Simcity 4 Deluxe, with EP1 Update, and pratically nothing else, so its a pure install.  It plays great for 15 miutes, 30 minutes, even an hour, but eventually crashes back to desktop each time. Note:  The Screen does not appear to mess up or distort, at least on the small cities I am playing (which I have spanned edge to edge.)

I have some SimCity Exception Reports from 3 recent crashes that I will attach, in case someone can read them and determine what is wrong.  Not enough resources?  A malicious program fighting with SC4?  A bad install?  Bad or hardware that is too old?  Overheating?

(I appreciate any help someone desires to offer, but I'm not interested in "turn the settings from high to low and live with it" as an answer.  However I'm happy to test with different settings, just no cop out, snarky answers please.  I'm sure it could work permanently on lower settings, but thats not how i want to play the game, thanks.)

I tried a few web searches, but i remembered how wonderful this site was with very educated staff and users, so im back here for the first time in over a year.   Any one got any ideas?  Thx.

AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHZ

768MB CAS 2 Crucial 133MHZ SDRAM

Abit KT7A-RAID MB

Geforce FX-5200 128MB

Two Maxtor 60GB HD in Raid-0

SimCity Exception Report 2008.06.14 11.39.12.txt

SimCity Exception Report 2008.06.14 13.31.19.txt

[Madog 3]

Hi Cougar

Well,some thinks:

1.You have a lot of games?unistall some of them

2.Geforce 5200 is good,but the geforce 550 is better

Good luck!

[Cougar2004 127]

Whoops double post.... see below for REAL one.  Thx.

[Cougar2004 127]

Originally posted by: Madog Hi Cougar

Well,some thinks:

1.You have a lot of games?unistall some of them

2.Geforce 5200 is good,but the geforce 550 is better

Good luck!quote>

 

Hi Madog!   Thanks for weighing in (you're the first). 

1.  The good news is that I have no other games on this computer, just SimCity 4 Deluxe and the pinball/freecell defaults of Windows 2000.  I even killed all non-essential processes prior to running the game (a standard practice for me - get the most bang for your game theory).  I also have no plugins, no mods, no cities and regions (except default), no added props or textures, no cheats, its a nearly pure install. 

2.  So you think my Graphics Card may not be able to handle it?  I was running this game back in 2006 on this same computer just with an MSI Geforce 2 GTS PRO 64MB.  It didn't draw very quickly, as you could imagine.  I often waited for buildings to show up.  However, this card draws very quickly with no artifacts, shadowing, and the audio studdering problems are now gone too for some reason.  But I suppose this annoying crash issue is going to take some work.  

I have been testing the game in Mode, instead of Hardware Rendering, with all the settings remaining H.  Haven't obtained the same bad behavior from it yet, but haven't played enough to really tell either.  

Thanks for the thoughts!  I always appreciate considering some new ideas.  

Here is a another recent crash log below.

SimCity Exception Report 2008.06.14 17.23.22.txt

[sithlrd98 66]

Originally posted by: Madog Hi Cougar

Well,some thinks:

1.You have a lot of games?unistall some of them

2.Geforce 5200 is good,but the geforce 550 is better

Good luck!quote>

 I've been using the same card(G-force 5200) for quite a while now!

To be honest , I dont think youve got enough RAM and depending on the size of plugins , you could be eating it up fast!

looking at one of your reports:

System memory: 768 Megabytes total, 416 Megabytes free. 

Then the other:

System memory: 768 Megabytes total, 368 Megabytes free.

And lastly:

System memory: 768 Megabytes total, 280 Megabytes free.

The other issue may just be the processor,   depending on how large your cities are and how many calculations its having to do!

Hope that helps!

[brearious 0]

I have the same occasional problem, and I am running with 4gig of ram and the geforce 7950 512mb video card. Anyways I have found that if I run with all the settings at high EXCEPT the shadows wich I run at low or medium, and limit the number (entire city panel covered) of trees. the problem seemed to clear up now ony crashes when I view at closest zoom in my largest city for any longer than 5 min or so. Hope this helps.

[Cougar2004 127]

Originally posted by: sithlrd98  

I've been using the same card(G-force 5200) for quite a while now!

To be honest , I dont think youve got enough RAM and depending on the size of plugins , you could be eating it up fast!

looking at one of your reports:

System memory: 768 Megabytes total, 416 Megabytes free. 

Then the other:

System memory: 768 Megabytes total, 368 Megabytes free.

And lastly:

System memory: 768 Megabytes total, 280 Megabytes free.

The other issue may just be the processor,   depending on how large your cities are and how many calculations its having to do!

Hope that helps!quote>

  

Thanks sithlrd98.  That is an interesting insight, especially from someone using the same GFX card.  Good use of logs for pattern searching.  After reviewing my last 15 crash logs, It seems that (I've only done small cities) the 'stuff' in a city, the less RAM is present at time of crash.  The Lowest RAM got was 200MB, however it has crashed a few times at  a bit over 400MB Free.  There could be a coorelation though, since crashes are more frequent the more full a city becomes!  

I have no plugins (0), just a pure install with EP1 Update, so if its the processor or RAM (which I have no slots free) then i surely wont be able to use plugins.  One game doesn't warrant the purchase of a new computer though.  However I have been meaning to build one.  And since I only use the Web, Office, and 1 Game (SC4D), I suppose i should prepare to build it with SimCity 4 in mind.  That sounds like a good topic to search for on these forums at Simtropolis.

Thanks again for your thoughts! 

[seopro007 0]

Has anyone come to a solution why Sim City 4 keeps resorting back to the desktop?

I've got a dual 3ghz CPU motherboard, for 6ghz of power, 32GB of RAM, 2x 1GB GeForce FX 7950's installed on a Vista 64Bit Platform. So I know it's not my spec's that's causing this. Other games work just fine.

I've tried loading as Administrator, no luck.

I went to Simcity.com and downloaded all the patches, no luck.

I've took all the plugins out of the main install folder and the documents/SimCity 4/Plugins folder also, no luck.

I've tried reinstalling the game too, no luck.

All was working just fine until I tried to install the BuddyBud Wall Stationary for Railways and Sunken Highways, etc. Even on the new install, still wont work.

And now I can't play it, kinda sucks I spent the last 10 hours today connecting all my terrains together before I started to build the cities and nothing works.

Any clues, suggestions for anything else that I may of missed that I could try?

Thanks all.

[Rabbit4080 0]

I have the same thing happening.

I have a Q6600, 6 gig ram, GeForce 8800 512

I've done searches over and over and over agian and i still don't have anything.

The only thing i found is that the access violation that always comes up in the crash log has something to do with RAM.

Some suggested things were:

1. Defective RAM

2. Not enough RAM

3. Bad code

I replaced my RAM to just to be sure,.. still crashed,.. increased my RAM, still crashed. I've even tried to take the graphics down. And it still crashes. But I am going to try to take the graphics down even more and see what happens.

Also, I've never seen it crash doing the same thing, in the same size of city or anything. Once it crashed when i was scrolling across my city. Once it crashed when i clicked on the question mark.

I used to be able to play this game without crashing on my old computer. So I don't know if all the new components has anything to do with it.

But at the same time, I don't think i had the official patch installed. So that might be something to try in the future too, reinstall without the patch.

All i know, is I love this game,.. but I'm getting very tired of building up a city for like an hour,... then loosing it all!!!!!!

[Yuxi 0]

I have observed SC4 (with the update) running on four different clean systems with no plugins installed, and three of them crash randomly.

Eventually I learned to just accept it and save often (as I said in another thread).

[Rabbit4080 0]

What do we exactly loose if we don't run the update?

[Cougar2004 127]

I agree with the posters above me here, that no matter what I have tried with hardware resources, crashing appears to continue, even after a completely wiping of the harddrive and clean and pure reinstall of SC4 (back in 2006). But I did recently find a way to buy myself more time, tested and proven after 3 days - I opened my box and with an air can blew out all the dust, and carefully cleaned and checked all the fans, tied the wires for best airflow. I am still crashing to desktop, with occasional BSoD, but now i get 2-3 hours instead of 15-45 min of game play. Ive even added the NAM and a whole bunch of really cool mods and lots and it hasn't decreased my newly found "extended gameplay time". I guess its just running cooler. Its my best guess. But its not a good permanent solution. When I build a new entire system soon, I'll have a new fighting chance to get to play without dealing with crashes (so long as im careful with plugins, etc.)

[vendetta007.mike 0]

The crash does not depend on anything but on the game manufacturers. It doesn't matter, whether you run your game in cheetah speed, whether you let it zoom in level 1 for longer than 5 minutes, it even does not depend that much on the brown boxes in your cities, or missing dependencies. The clue itself lies in some missing files in the game. No player can avoid crashes in SC4. They happen whether you want it or not. SC4, like any other game needs specific data to run and storage it in your RAM, which is going to execute later. The problem is that there are some files missing which means a gap appears during game play, which eventually leads to crash. As far as I can understand, these are some debug files (.pdp). The game manufacturers must have missed these files. I think, a proper patch will resolve the problem.

[TheGTAGod 9]

I have more than 100 exception reports ( not kidding ) in Vista, but when I used to play Simcity 4 in XP less than 10 of these documents appeared. Strange right?

[Svenea21 0]

So is there a proper patch for it?

[Rob Mayor 0]

Are you using Vista or XP?

[Cougar2004 127]

I was using Windows 2000 1.2Ghz AMD CPU with 768 PC133 SDRAM with Geforce FX-5200 128MB back when I posted this.

Since I switched at Christmas (08) to a brand new Vista Quadcore 4GB RAM with Geforce 9800 GTX+ 1TB, I have never had a crash, slowness, artifacts, or errors of any type.

Since it was an older computer it could have been anything, however the diskspace was full! So i tend to believe that i didnt have enough Disk Cache available to run the game. The OS W2K worked fine when I first installed the game,