Fixing crashes to desktop

[leedsrule 2]

I used to have the poroblem of Simcity 4 Deluxe crashing to the desktop but after searching tons of forums ive found the best solution.

If you have this problem, dont change your computer settings or turn off any antivirus automatic updates. what you do is go to start> Simcity 4> properties> compatability> 'Windows server 2003 (service pack 1)'. This works on Windows 7 and Vista, im not sure about XP but ive heard turning off 'Explorer.exe' helps.

Tell me if there are any problems and ill have a look but i don't know much about computers so i may not be able to tell you much but this is the only solution that works for me and i didn't even need to move any plugins or turn off any antivirus firewalls ect.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I used to have the poroblem of Simcity 4 Deluxe crashing to the desktop but after searching tons of forums ive found the best solution.

If you have this problem, dont change your computer settings or turn off any antivirus automatic updates. what you do is go to start> Simcity 4> properties> compatability> 'Windows server 2003 (service pack 1)'. This works on Windows 7 and Vista, im not sure about XP but ive heard turning off 'Explorer.exe' helps.

Tell me if there are any problems and ill have a look but i don't know much about computers so i may not be able to tell you much but this is the only solution that works for me and i didn't even need to move any plugins or turn off any antivirus firewalls ect.

Interesting that you should choose a server decor. I should be very careful of turning off (killing) Explorer.exe because it is the GUI for the file system. I think a system daemon will restart it, will you, nil you.

[leedsrule 2]

right i have no idea if it works i just read it. apprently it also helps if you 'run as asdminastrator' but changing the compatability seems 2 help me

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

right i have no idea if it works i just read it. apparently it also helps if you 'run as administrator' but changing the comparability seems 2 help me

Because of the way I run (Linux with wine), I have a choice of all Windows decors from current (Windows 2008 SP2 to Windows 98). I tried it with Windows 2003 and seems to get fewer crashes. I can't run programs as root. It is far too dangerous, as access to everything in the machine is granted to that account.

I do not run with affinity set to single processing, and it doesn't seem to matter. I did a test when I first got this box. There are some problems with the way wine handles graphics, and I have to run in software mode.

[leedsrule 2]

ok is affinity like dual core and stuff?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

ok is affinity like dual core and stuff?

Yes. You can set the affinity of a program on the command line. If you set it to 1, you will only use 1 processor (core), however in most systems this is unnecessary. If you want to try it without messing with your command line, start the program and when you get to the regions screen, press CTRL+ALT+delete to open the Task Manager. Find SimCity 4, right click it, and set the affinity to 1.

[leedsrule 2]

ok is affinity like dual core and stuff?

Yes. You can set the affinity of a program on the command line. If you set it to 1, you will only use 1 processor (core), however in most systems this is unnecessary. If you want to try it without messing with your command line, start the program and when you get to the regions screen, press CTRL+ALT+delete to open the Task Manager. Find SimCity 4, right click it, and set the affinity to 1.

hmm sounds good

my simcity just shut down after 2 hours of play so my tactic is not completely effective

would it help if i set affinity to 1?

[WillsEmpire 0]

I have SimCity 4 Deluxe, I recently brought it. I had the original game before that since its release back in 2004. I've had the deluxe one for nearly a week and today its only just started crashing to the desktop after playing the game for only about 5mins. My game did crash before getting the deluxe edition but only sometimes and after a good amount of game time (2hrs or so). I have Windows XP Service Pack 2 &:

Intel® Celeron® M CPU 420 @ 460GHz, 504MB Ram. The laptop is also a Compaq and I got it in 2006. Do you think stopping explorer.exe will fix it or maybe any other alternative. I'm thinking maybe the computer is just of old age and can't handle this kind of game.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I have SimCity 4 Deluxe, I recently brought it. I had the original game before that since its release back in 2004. I've had the deluxe one for nearly a week and today its only just started crashing to the desktop after playing the game for only about 5mins. My game did crash before getting the deluxe edition but only sometimes and after a good amount of game time (2hrs or so). I have Windows XP Service Pack 2 &:

Intel® Celeron® M CPU 420 @ 460GHz, 504MB Ram. The laptop is also a Compaq and I got it in 2006. Do you think stopping explorer.exe will fix it or maybe any other alternative. I'm thinking maybe the computer is just of old age and can't handle this kind of game.

Unless you bought the licensed game from Steam or another on-line site, you need the EP1 and BATupdate, which I hope you have got. You can check this by finding the SimCity 4.exe in your program files/maxis/simcity deluxe/apps folder, and right clicking on it. The build version is in the Version tab. If it is less than 640, you need the updates.

I believe that explorer.exe is unstoppable. The system will restart it if you kill it because it is the interface to NTFS.

You may be crashing because of overheats on your laptop. This game beats the CPU to death and if you do not have sufficient cooling most laptops will quit on overheat. Could that be your problem?

The other thing that may crash your game is the size of your plugins suite vs. your swap (paging) space. With a half gig of memory, don't expect to fit a gig of plugins into it without having it page. Check the size of your paging file. It should be 4095MB (fixed, not managed by windows). This game is all in (virtual) memory, and the tables can be huge for a big city tile that is full of stuff. And this is over and above the game text, its basic set of tables and your plugins, all of which take memory. If you are getting a lot of disk activity when you are playing, you are paging.

I have always felt that running this game in a small laptop was like trying to fit an elephant into a breadbox.

Let us know, please, about your operating values. There may be something there that will help.