Too Many crashes to handle.

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

Ok, so i posted this in "what frustrates you about sim city" a while back and i was told to put what was happening in here but i never had the chance..

Anyway this is what is wrong with my sim city, It crashes constantly, it crashes when I: build anything on high altitudes, zooming in or out in any city size, a quarter of the time i save, some landmarks and just randomly.

it's getting really annoying... :|

What should i do to stop it crashing?

I have SC4D, and one download that has made the crashing worse (still crashed a lot before i installed it) is Fukuda's

Climate mod 1 Winter fog 1, i've tried many times to get rid of it but i can't find it in my plugins folder.

  Edited July 9, 2011 by StreetxROBLOX  

[Wiimeiser 445]

Do you have a lot of industry, especially ploppable? Correct me if I'm wrong, but can having too much industry for the RCI engine to handle actually crash the game?

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

I don't have any ploppable industry, I have a lot of zoned though. But i don't think that that would be the problem. Thank you

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

For the forum to really get a handle on this we need more information from you.

Open your Exception Reports folder, find any of the dumps that is a .txt file, and post the first twenty lines only. This will tell us a lot about both the game and your machine.

In addition we need to know what GPU you are running and whether you run in hardware or software rendering.

Tell us the number of cores your CPU chip has, and who made it.

What size swap file do you have? You can find this by right click on My Computer and following the Advanced Tabs until you come to the Virtual Memory description.

You are probably suffering from one of the usual problems, but we need the technical details to sort it out.

[Terring 6,476]

Do you have the official patch? Thanks to it, I can play a whole day without crashes.

[mrbisonm 1,622]

Before you do anything , make sure you have the patch that Terring talks about. This is number one cause for crashes.

Greed is one of human's worst defects. We want this and then we want this, also that is something we think we need and of course this is a must etc...etc... Filling up plugins is not the best to do when you want a nice smooth playing game. It can take years to build up a Plugins that is worth playing with and has no crashes.

That is the number two cause for crashes. Create a folder in MyDoc/SC4 and name it Plugins2. The only way to fix this is to open a new city (for experimental use only) and cut your plugins into half, meaning take out (and put into Plugins2) half of your plugins from the Plugins folder and try the game, playing in different heights, zooming in and out after you have build a few things and even try to plop those lots that usually causes the crash. If after an hour or so play everything is fine, you can be sure that what you have in your plugins is ok and worth keeping. Now rename the one you were playing with, such as Plugins1 and delete the 2 in Plugin's2 name and try that one. If it didn't crash with number one it surely will with number two.

Then cut this plugin into half also and try out each half until you end up finding the cause or causes (the files that make the game crash. That's the only way, unless something else is wrong, but that rarely happens.

While going through your Plugins folder, take out all your Mods (only) and put them into C/Programfiles/Maxis/Simcity4/Plugins. Only mods, such as NAM, SAM, RHW, terrain, rock, traffic, cheats, water, job mods etc, no lots. This way they will load first and faster, therefor helping the game a little and also organise everything better and easier to find a certain problem.

I have been doing this since the game came out, after a Maxis member told us to do so and never had a crash sinbce, except when I downloaded once a file that didn't like another file that I already had in my game.

Try this and the game will be much more fun, but make sure that you got that patch.

mrb

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Gents, before we prescribe for this patient, we need to diagnose the problem. Let's wait for the patient history.

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

Nonny, dose .tct mean text doucment? Because in the exception reports folder i have 352 Text documents. DO i post the most recent or the older one? Or do i go into the atual folder and copy that gibberish stuff that makes no sence to me. I'll post the first 20 lines of the most recent one. (there were 3 more lines that looked important so i added in)

Exception time: 07/09/2011, at 17:19:26.

Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.

Current thread ID: 6728 (0x00001a48).

Version information:

Application/module path: C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe

Application/module version name: SimCity 4

Application/module version: 1.1.640.0

System version: Windows NT 6.0

System memory: 2048 Megabytes total, 692 Megabytes free.

Exception module: C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe.

Exception address: 0x006b10bc. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x002aa0bc.

Registers

EAX: 00002125

EBX: 00000000

ECX: 4b400007

EDX: 0000004e

ESI: 1043c858

EDI: 1bd84f14

CS:EIP: 001b:006b10bc

SS:ESP: 0023:0012fbec EBP:10d88ed4

DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003b GS:0000

Flags: 00210202

I'm not quite sure what a GPU is, and i think i am running software rendering.

I don't know where the CPU chip is or who made it.

I think i might have a fairly large swap file.

Sorry if this hasn't been much of a help, i'm not really good with computers.

Also, what is this official patch that Terring is talking about? I've never heard or seen it before.

  Edited July 10, 2011 by StreetxROBLOX  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Nonny, dose .tct mean text doucment? Because in the exception reports folder i have 352 Text documents. DO i post the most recent or the older one? Or do i go into the atual folder and copy that gibberish stuff that makes no sence to me. I'll post the first 20 lines of the most recent one. (there were 3 more lines that looked important so i added in)

Exception time: 07/09/2011, at 17:19:26.

Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.

Current thread ID: 6728 (0x00001a48).

Version information:

Application/module path: C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe

Application/module version name: SimCity 4

Application/module version: 1.1.640.0

System version: Windows NT 6.0

System memory: 2048 Megabytes total, 692 Megabytes free.

Exception module: C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe.

Exception address: 0x006b10bc. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x002aa0bc.

Registers

EAX: 00002125

EBX: 00000000

ECX: 4b400007

EDX: 0000004e

ESI: 1043c858

EDI: 1bd84f14

CS:EIP: 001b:006b10bc

SS:ESP: 0023:0012fbec EBP:10d88ed4

DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003b GS:0000

Flags: 00210202

I'm not quite sure what a GPU is, and i think i am running software rendering.

I don't know where the CPU chip is or who made it.

I think i might have a fairly large swap file.

Sorry if this hasn't been much of a help, i'm not really good with computers.

Also, what is this official patch that Terring is talking about? I've never heard or seen it before.

Well, that's a lot of help so far.

Your game is fully up to date, which eliminates a lot of problems.

You are running Vista (a box of bugs if there ever was one) which might be your problem.

You seem to have lots of resources (looks like 3GB of memory)

And you have a standard (expected) crash trying to dereference a zero pointer, which happens when the game gets overrun either by too many commands at once or something internal. I've been looking at this type of crash for years and as near as I can tell there is an off-by-one bug in the game, which means a programmer couldn't count right when he set something up.

Now, you have a lot of problems with the terminology, so I assume you've never taken an introduction to computers course. I'll try to clarify and help you get the rest of the information we really need to fully understand your problem.

First, is your machine a desktop or a lap top? and who made it?

Now, GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit, and it is also called your graphics card or graphics chip. It is the part of your PC that controls your display.

CPU is the Central Processing Unit. It is the part of the computer that takes instructions from memory and executes them. It is sometimes also called the logic processor. It may or may not have more than one core unit. A core unit is, effectively, a single CPU, with the exception that many circuits on the integrated circuit chip can be shared between multiple cores. It would be useful for us to know whether you have more than one core, and if so, how many.

We won't worry about talking about your swap file. That's the story of virtual memory and the way the operating system works, and you don't need to know this (yet).

Forget the patch nonsense. You have both the necessary patches. Your program version is 1,1,640 which is fully updated.

Now, let's dig into your machine a little.

Press Start and choose Run. You will get a dialog box.

type dxdiag into this box and press return

This calls up the DirectX diagnostic. On the first page of the program's display you should see some good stuff about your machine. If you can, take a snap of that page, and post it here.

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

Ok, yeah I haven't taken introduction to computers, yet. As i am only in Yr 9.

Anyway, It is a desktop and made by acer.

The GPU, if it is part of my PC, i don't really know where it is and if i do i'm scared of breaking something important.. But i remember the booklet thing that came with the PC when i first got it, It was the highest at the time the computer was made. 5 years ago. Is that any help?

The CPU has just got ummm...?

here is the screen shot of the Direct X page thing

Hope this is more of a help.

  Edited July 11, 2011 by StreetxROBLOX  

[Wraner 335]

I have a problem with my SC4 game. Its odd and I've never heard anybody mention it.

In a new region the land will automatically raise itself and I can't seem to figure out why it does this?

[Jazzmaster 716]

I have a problem with my SC4 game. Its odd and I've never heard anybody mention it.

In a new region the land will automatically raise itself and I can't seem to figure out why it does this?

Not sure what you mean? Do you mean you create a new region and all the tiles are flat? If that's what you mean; this is normal. You have to terraform either in the game or with one of the few external programs provided for regional terraforming (mind you, they are resource intensive).

[Owaen 5]

Ok, yeah I haven't taken introduction to computers, yet. As i am only in Yr 9.

Anyway, It is a desktop and made by acer.

The GPU, if it is part of my PC, i don't really know where it is and if i do i'm scared of breaking something important.. But i remember the booklet thing that came with the PC when i first got it, It was the highest at the time the computer was made. 5 years ago. Is that any help?

The CPU has just got one core.

here is the screen shot of the Direct X page thing

Hope this is more of a help.

That image helps alot.

Your CPU does have multiple cores, in fact it has four.

That is what the quad means.

Would you be willing to do an experiment?

I promise, you wont break anything.

If you know how, make a new SimCity shortcut on your desktop.

Right click it and choose properties.

In the shortcut tab there is a line called target.

It probably looks something like this: "D:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe\SimCity 4.exe"

Just add -CPUCount:1 to the line so it will look like this: "D:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe\SimCity 4.exe" -CPUCount:1

Don´t change anything else.

Click OK and start the game using this new shortcut.

Hopefully your game will not crash anymore.

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

Ok, yeah I haven't taken introduction to computers, yet. As i am only in Yr 9.

Anyway, It is a desktop and made by acer.

The GPU, if it is part of my PC, i don't really know where it is and if i do i'm scared of breaking something important.. But i remember the booklet thing that came with the PC when i first got it, It was the highest at the time the computer was made. 5 years ago. Is that any help?

The CPU has just got one core.

here is the screen shot of the Direct X page thing

Hope this is more of a help.

That image helps alot.

Your CPU does have multiple cores, in fact it has four.

That is what the quad means.

Would you be willing to do an experiment?

I promise, you wont break anything.

If you know how, make a new SimCity shortcut on your desktop.

Right click it and choose properties.

In the shortcut tab there is a line called target.

It probably looks something like this: "D:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe\SimCity 4.exe"

Just add -CPUCount:1 to the line so it will look like this: "D:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe\SimCity 4.exe" -CPUCount:1

Don´t change anything else.

Click OK and start the game using this new shortcut.

Hopefully your game will not crash anymore.

Owaen is right. Most problems with crashing in SimCity 4 from Quad core computers are the fact it has multiple cores. So instead of the computer using 4 cores to run the game it will only use one with this method.

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

Owaen, i created another shortcut, added -CPUCount:1 to the end of it, and it didn't work.

It came up with:

Problem with short cut

The name "C:\program files\Maxis\SimCity 4.exe"-CPUCount:1

specified in the target box is not valid. Make sure the path and file name are correct.

What now?

[Owaen 5]

Owaen, i created another shortcut, added -CPUCount:1 to the end of it, and it didn't work.

It came up with:

Problem with short cut

The name "C:\program files\Maxis\SimCity 4.exe"-CPUCount:1

specified in the target box is not valid. Make sure the path and file name are correct.

What now?

You need a blank between the " and -

Like this: "C:\program files\Maxis\SimCity 4.exe" -CPUCount:1

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Very good. The command line is like a sentence and needs spaces between "words". To make your startup run better you could also add

-intro:off to suppress that boring movie at the beginning.

Some users have been successful with turning of the internal exception handler. If you are still having trouble try adding this word as well:

-EH:off

There needs to be one space before each hyphen.

If you still crash, we'll have to have a look at your graphics hardware setup.

  Edited July 11, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

Thank you guys! So far no crashes!

[Wraner 335]

I have a problem with my SC4 game. Its odd and I've never heard anybody mention it.

In a new region the land will automatically raise itself and I can't seem to figure out why it does this?

Not sure what you mean? Do you mean you create a new region and all the tiles are flat? If that's what you mean; this is normal. You have to terraform either in the game or with one of the few external programs provided for regional terraforming (mind you, they are resource intensive).

No, when I create a new region I know that the terrain will be flat. The problem is that when I go to play one of the cities the land has been raised a considerable height. I have to lower the land back to normal before starting anything.

In the region the land looks as it should, low and flat, when I click to start a city, the individual block's elevation is raised.

It is really odd.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Do you have a terrain or tree mod? You may have to understand it better, because it sounds like you have the elevation set to something you don't want.

[StreetxROBLOX 22]

My game still crashes when i build on high altitudes. I know it wont be the PEG pine tree god thing, i know that it's not my terrain mod, what could it be then?

--Edit--

I think i know what may cause it to crash, when i extended the region map (by making that .bmp file larger) It might have screwed up something, a bit of terraforming and it should be good

  Edited July 13, 2011 by StreetxROBLOX  

[VicRusty 74]

Ok, yeah I haven't taken introduction to computers, yet. As i am only in Yr 9.

Anyway, It is a desktop and made by acer.

The GPU, if it is part of my PC, i don't really know where it is and if i do i'm scared of breaking something important.. But i remember the booklet thing that came with the PC when i first got it, It was the highest at the time the computer was made. 5 years ago. Is that any help?

The CPU has just got one core.

here is the screen shot of the Direct X page thing

Hope this is more of a help.

That image helps alot.

Your CPU does have multiple cores, in fact it has four.

That is what the quad means.

Would you be willing to do an experiment?

I promise, you wont break anything.

If you know how, make a new SimCity shortcut on your desktop.

Right click it and choose properties.

In the shortcut tab there is a line called target.

It probably looks something like this: "D:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe\SimCity 4.exe"

Just add -CPUCount:1 to the line so it will look like this: "D:\Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe\SimCity 4.exe" -CPUCount:1

Don´t change anything else.

Click OK and start the game using this new shortcut.

Hopefully your game will not crash anymore.

Fantastic!!

Now the Sc4 WindowsVista players have the chance to play without ''crashes''!!

Owaen, you make me so happy yesterday! Thanks to share it!

[BEJA 2]

.....I too are now experiencing too many crashes.....here is my latest exception report:

Exception time: 07/19/2011, at 20:36:04.

Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.

Current thread ID: 4980 (0x00001374).

Version information:

Application/module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe

Application/module version name: SimCity 4

Application/module version: 1.1.640.0

System version: Windows NT 6.1

System memory: 4096 Megabytes total, 3836 Megabytes free.

Exception module: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe.

Exception address: 0x005ba45b. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x001b345b.

Registers

EAX: 00000000

EBX: 693e5218

ECX: 00000000

EDX: 00000016

ESI: 00000009

EDI: 806da7fd

CS:EIP: 0023:005ba45b

SS:ESP: 002b:0018f924 EBP:0018f994

DS:002b ES:002b FS:0053 GS:002b

Flags: 00210206

Now my computer info:

Windows 7 Professional...version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

Acer Aspire M5802/M3802

Intel core 2Quad CPU Q8400 (4cores)

8GB RAM Total Virtual Memory 16GB Page File Space 8GB

Graphics Card Nividia GeForce GT220 Driver Version: 8.17.9745

The Issue: Lots of random crashes...at times during start-up and at other times during a save. Lately I have to attempt loading up the game three times before it holds, and then once inside the city and playing, it usually lasts only for one save and then crashes...also I do set the Affinity to the '0' core

As always...thanks for any help;

Bruce

[BEJA 2]

Here is another exception report...this one when the game crashes on loading up, ( the first was during game play).

Exception time: 07/19/2011, at 21:12:26.

Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.

Current thread ID: 5504 (0x00001580).

Version information:

Application/module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe

Application/module version name: SimCity 4

Application/module version: 1.1.640.0

System version: Windows NT 6.1

System memory: 4096 Megabytes total, 4096 Megabytes free.

Exception module: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe.

Exception address: 0x0080339c. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x003fc39c.

Registers

EAX: 0000be80

EBX: 00000018

ECX: 2b090c34

EDX: 29e00414

ESI: 2993f414

EDI: 29b59a60

CS:EIP: 0023:0080339c

SS:ESP: 002b:0018f7b8 EBP:247692e4

DS:002b ES:002b FS:0053 GS:002b

Flags: 00210206

[jacksunny 741]

Have you tried entering -CPUCount:1 and -EH:off? Have you downloaded anything recently that you think might be causing it? If you remove all your plugins does the crashing stop?

[BEJA 2]

Have you tried entering -CPUCount:1 and -EH:off? Have you downloaded anything recently that you think might be causing it? If you remove all your plugins does the crashing stop?

Thanks for the response....I manually set the Affinity to the zero core, and nothing in my plugins would be causing anything as I have not downloaded anything recently. I'm thinking that it may be my graphics card, as I know the Nvidia protocols are touchy when it comes to Simcity....having said that, I'm not sure which driver works the best....I recently reverted to an older driver, but that was after the random crashes began.

Bruce

[BEJA 2]

Hi all...so, I have added to the command line the CPU Count 1 line, and it work fairly well...I was able to do some reconstruction in a city and saved twice before the game crashed, which is an improvement! It crashed on the third save attempt....

Cheers:

[jacksunny 741]

Saving by pressing Ctrl + S tends to also reduce crashing, so you can try that as well.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Make sure all your video card options are set to "application selected" or words to that effect. SC4 hates modern video cards.

[BEJA 2]

Make sure all your video card options are set to "application selected" or words to that effect. SC4 hates modern video cards.

Thanks, 'A Nonny Moose'.....yes, everything for SimCity is at application controlled, as well as other tips that you have given over the years........Now, this may be a silly question: Would it help if I re-installed the game? Or would that be just a waste of time?

Bruce