Audio Issues

[DavidBrown 0]

Well I'm back on Simtropolis at last, now that I've got a new computer that can play SimCity 4.

I've installed the game and everyting is running smoother than I could have ever imagined.

However, there is one problem which I believe is down to my sound card. Whilst playing the game, the system (not just the game, but the whole computer) will randomly crash and reboot, for no apparent reason whatsoever. Occasionally a blue screen with lots of text (which disappears far too quickly for me to be able to read any of it...) will appear before the computer reboots itself. When the system is back up and running, I get the standard "The system has recovered from a serious error" message and the "Send Report" option.

I send the report, and it will take me to the Windows Error Reporting page - and will come up with one of two pages. Here they are:





(Hopefully they should work - please bear with me if they don't)

The first one obviously telling me that I have a problem with the audio.

I have a C-Media Wave device (not sure if that's enough info to be of use), which has no problems according to DirectX. The odd thing is that the problem only occours on SimCity and nothing else, and I haven't yet downloaded any plugins. I have gone through nearly everything suggested on Windows error reporting (although C-Media's website has no help page and I'm not prepared to disable my sound card when it works on everything else).

Any extra help would be greatly appreciated.

[LeFail 0]

You tried changing/updating sound drivers?

Do you have an external (bought separately, like a Sound Blaster) or internal (like Realtek) sound card? I have a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer that causes one of my computers to blue screen 75% of the time on reboot.

When the blue screen flashes up, try to find a file name as quickly as you can. The file causing the blue screen should be shown there, so getting that file's name will help us identify the problem.

[tungston 19]

Vista is cranky about hardware device drivers, and some of the earlier drives don't conform to Vista. Make sure you have the very latest from the manufacturer.

[DavidBrown 0]

LeFail - I think the driver may well be the problem. I have downloaded a "Driver Detective" which tells me that I have a C-Media AC97, which needs a newer driver. However it doesn't tell me exactly what type of AC97 I have, so I have no idea which driver I need to download from C-Media's website. I do know that it is an external PCI card but no more. As for the blue screen, I had a camera ready when the system crashed again so here it is:

http://img211.imageshack.us/my.php?image=errordk2.jpg

Can't see a file name on there.

tungston - I am on XP and not Vista, though as I say I think it is the fact that I don't have the latest driver which is causing the problem.

Many thanks for your help. I should also say that other games are starting to crash in identical fashion, so it definately seems to be a hardware rather than a SimCity software problem.

[tungston 19]

My mistake, David, I looked at the images and saw the Vista looking theme. 

BTW:  Please post images in jpg format, as the png don't show up in IE.

EDIT:  Your simptoms would also indicate a faulty memory module.  If you have two, take one out and try it, then switch modules.

[DavidBrown 0]

Well it turned out that the problem was a faulty sound card rather than a driver issue. Put a new Creative SoundBlaster card in, and everything's OK now. Thanks for your help, anyway, tungston.