Random Crash?

[Coasterfanatic11 1]

System: dell dimension e520

recent mods: NAM, a crapload of plugins (removed)

I can be playing a city, and then all of a sudden, it just kicks me out of the game! My computer still works fine, it just kicks me out?

-cf11

[Mr.Gear 0]

Yeap, that happens on my computer too. I don't know what is the problem. but I found some way - I save the game every 20 minutes, so it doesn't crash. But if there is better solution... I'll wait for the answeres.

[thefunktopus 1]

You're probably both experiencing multicore CPU issues. If you have a processor with more than one cores you must tell SC4 each time you play to only use one core. To do this, whilst playing SC4 bring up task manager. Click the processes tab. Right click the simcity 4 process, and select set affinity. In the window, uncheck all the boxes but one. You have to do this every time you play SC4.

[Mr.Gear 0]

thefunktopus, Thanks a lot, that really helped me!

[Quinsam22 0]

I have a similar problem - in which I play a city for ten minutes, and all of a sudden the game terminates without warning. I've been making major changes to the one city (Destruction of old abandoned buildings - unnecessary landmarks - replacement of coal and solar plants with a nuke plant), could that all have something to do with it?

I have only a single core processor - set to 1.73GHz with 1.00GB of RAM. I can send both the Exception and Minidump files if advanced diagnosis is required.

Thanks a lot

[tjh876 31]

Quinsam22, it helps if you give us OS specs too, it might be an issue in an add-on you might have, ore a bug, but since its a single core, probably this will not help.

Its my 200th post too...

[SC4BOY 20]

Originally posted by: Quinsam22

I have a similar problem - in which I play a city for ten minutes, and all of a sudden the game terminates ....

quote>

You have rather a minimal system. It could be that you are simply now pushing the limits of your setup. This is and always has been a characteristic of the game, even in the old days. Your only options are to be sure you have as little else running as possible, don't play in a window but in full screen, save often, minimize in-game settings,  etc. Unless you have added recent things to your game which may be part of the problem, but I doubt it.

[Quinsam22 0]

Thanks... I'll give it a try.

I have Windows 7 now, but this problem constantly happened on the same machine when I had Windows XP SP2.

I'll try and speed the processor up to 2.0GHz - it's an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ processor, and it hasn't let me down yet! See, I'm still running a Socket A motherboard system, with AGP slot.

I'll tone the graphics settings down a little... and see what happens from there.

[SC4BOY 20]

Yes one of my pc's is that old.. and much less memory. only 375MB.. .. it works great as long as I don't get ambitious about big cities.. oh and another thing is to pick maps with more small city tiles (or change the config file to make small tiles).. lots of things impact it like lots of animated props, stuff like fountains and etc.. or worse it the "water falls" plops.. also don't select "turning lanes" option on the NAM.. lots of little tricks if you dig into it.. oh and lots of things like seasonal trees, etc.. all these things load the game up

[Quinsam22 0]

The only item on that list I had was the turning lanes on NAM, and I reinstalled it with that option disabled. In addition to which, I managed to increase my memory frequency from 133Mhz to 166Mhz, and the processor speed is now 1.74Ghz, but all that made no difference. Could I send the Exception file report to somebody more experienced in the likes of this scenario?

Thanks

[SC4BOY 20]

Depending on your system and your cities that you are growing, you may simply reach a point that you just have to either put up with it or not play.. There are conditions in the plugins that do aggravate the problem, but aside from removing, dividing, adding back, etc until you find out what there is no easy answer.. and your exception reports are useless..