Simcity 4 won't start...

[iyarkonan 0]

i was playing it yesterday, so then i took a break from it. about 3 hours later, i tried to play it but it wouldn't work. i decided to wait for today to see if it worked, but it didnt. all that happens is that the icon with the bridge pops up, then nothing happens. i really wanna fix this without reinstalling because i have a good city that i started.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

i was playing it yesterday, so then i took a break from it. about 3 hours later, i tried to play it but it wouldn't work. i decided to wait for today to see if it worked, but it didnt. all that happens is that the icon with the bridge pops up, then nothing happens. i really wanna fix this without reinstalling because i have a good city that i started.

There is a chance that you have a ghost of the game still active. Look in your task list (CTRL+ALT+DELETE) and if it is so, right click on it, and kill it.

If you are running a laptop and have not booted it lately, do so. This also applies to desktops that are suspended or hibernated.

Failing either of these, check to see if your sound system is properly connected. Program won't run without accelerated sound.

If you are not running windows, then use whatever tool you have to review running programs, find the ghost and kill it. In Linux you can use the system monitor.

Oh, and this program requires a minimum of geekism because it was written when most users knew how to really use the operating system. Take a walk though your tutorials on your O/S. This is not your ordinary, bubble wrapped game. It needs some tender loving care sometimes.

[iyarkonan 0]

i was playing it yesterday, so then i took a break from it. about 3 hours later, i tried to play it but it wouldn't work. i decided to wait for today to see if it worked, but it didnt. all that happens is that the icon with the bridge pops up, then nothing happens. i really wanna fix this without reinstalling because i have a good city that i started.

There is a chance that you have a ghost of the game still active. Look in your task list (CTRL+ALT+DELETE) and if it is so, right click on it, and kill it.

If you are running a laptop and have not booted it lately, do so. This also applies to desktops that are suspended or hibernated.

Failing either of these, check to see if your sound system is properly connected. Program won't run without accelerated sound.

If you are not running windows, then use whatever tool you have to review running programs, find the ghost and kill it. In Linux you can use the system monitor.

Oh, and this program requires a minimum of geekism because it was written when most users knew how to really use the operating system. Take a walk though your tutorials on your O/S. This is not your ordinary, bubble wrapped game. It needs some tender loving care sometimes.

thanks! i looked in processes in the task manager and stopped a simcity-4.exe. now it runs. thx a lot

[chimmy 0]

Well don't have that much GB Left in your hardrive that might be the problem check to GB You left then then try run program you sould have problems with SimCity 4

  Edited July 27, 2012 by chimmy  

[swordman59 0]

Mine does not work at all, i used to restart my computer then it worked but now i doesn't.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There are several reasons that a large memory program stops working in a computer, but most of it is lack of disk maintenance. If you are on windows, it can make quite a difference because of the way NTFS runs. To get any kind of resolution on this we need to know two basic things:

What operating system are you running?

Have you every run disk cleanup and disk defragmenter?

[SimCities 11]

Is it meant to be in applications to kill it?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Is it meant to be in applications to kill it?

Context please.  What is "it"?  And what do you mean by "in applications"?

[SimCities 11]

I had meant in the task manager, my computer is windows 7. But i managed to fix the problem.

[SusannaG 4]

I was having this problem, and this solution worked; thanks!

[Trentreznorspig 4]

I now have a similar issue but it's not in the processes.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The OP did eventually solve his problem.  However, have you considered that there may be a zombie copy of the game running on your machine?  Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and look in the list of running programs.  If SimCity 4.exe is there, then kill it.

 

SC4 will not start if a copy is already running.

[Trentreznorspig 4]

Yep. Did it many times before I noticed that it wasn't in the list of processes.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

So, if you are still having this problem, we need to explore your situation.

 

Operating System?

Machine?

Memory?

Storage?

GPU and Driver?

Game Version?

 

It's hard to make any kind of guess because everyone has a different system. 

For example, I am on Ubuntu 14.04 with wine-1.7.27 on an AMD Athlon II X2 245 (dual core). 

Deluxe 1,1,641,0 (the downloaded version),

I have 4 GB of shared memory with my GPU AMD RS780 using 512MB of that with the Gallium 0.4 driver. 

64-bit machine but with a 32-bit wine decor.

And I have 1.3 TB of on-line storage with 1.0 GB of plugins.

[Sabretooth78 808]

This isn't exactly the same situation as those mentioned previously in this thread, but I've figured out why my game crashes (rather, won't load - doesn't even generate an exception dump) when I load with my raw plugins yet runs fine when I load with the datpacked analog.

 

At first, I was thinking I was on my way to isolating the problem by removing all my 300s (growables; I keep them all in one folder).  The game would then load.  It would also load if I put my datpacked 300s in along with everything else raw.  Seems like the problem is there?  Hold on.  It will load if my unpacked 300s are there, but only if I remove my 500s (transportation), 600s (utilities) and 700s (civics).  But if I replace those with their datpacked counterparts, still no go.  This makes me think the 300s were conflicting with something in the 500s, 600s or 700s, and datpacking seemed to be correcting it.

 

So I move into testing the 300 folder.  I install different combinations of lots - R only, C only, I-HT only, etc.  Crashes every time.  Install portions of the R - still crashes.  Combination didn't seem to matter - how to isloate?  I put just a few lots in - it works!  Almost by accident, I discover it crashes when I just put one particular lot in - happens to be spa's "Church Street Apartments".  This particular download features several variants on a few different lot sizes, so it's a little heavy in individual file count at about 15 +/-.  If I remove but one lot size (6 or so .sc4lot files), it works.  But it matters not which one I choose.  Odd.

 

When all is said and done, I determined that when I exceed 9500 or so files, the game won't load.  It must be a file count limitation of some kind.  It just so happened that the 300s folder contains about as many files as the 500s, 600s and 700s combined.  Hence, why taking either combination out would allow the game to run.  With the 300s out, simply adding that one growable lot (which happened to contain just the right number of files) tipped it over the edge.  It's a bit of a grey line - when I put that last file in (the straw that breaks the camel's back), the game will load to the region view, but the region view is blank.  It'll then crash while loading a city.  Throw a few more files in and it won't even reach the region view.  Nary a minidump in either case.

 

It's a question of file count vs. file size for a few reasons:  With all growables out except for spa's single lot, it was at 2.8 GB when it crashed.  I then put all of the growables back, and took out a select number of other lots - same approximate file count, but this time nearly 3.0 GB worked before I threw it a few files over again.  Also consider that I've been able to run with a datpack collection as large as 4.4 GB (albeit over a "lean" 50 or so files) with no ill effect.

 

Tonight I'm going to try to figure out if it's my game copy (Amazon download) or some weird Wineskin limitation by firing the game up in Parallels (which I unfortunately must maintain if I ever want to BAT again).  Not that I really care - I'm not leaving Wine and there is no practical reason why I wouldn't datpack at least a large enough portion of my lots - but I figure I might as well for the sake of fully chasing the problem out in case it can assist someone else.  I'm just happy to know it's something stupid like that as opposed to a genuine yet incredibly elusive conflict.

---

 

As for the question of Wineskin vs. "straight" Wine, I actually did try install Wine using Homebrew and XCode a few months ago (part of trying to get 3dsmax to work) and didn't notice any difference in terms of performance or disk footprint.  Therefore I'm intent to stick with Wineskin due to the way it packages the app - basically identical to a native Mac OS app (entirely self-contained) and very portable/easy to back up, etc.  If I mess something up, I just delete the .app and copy a "clean" copy over from my backup HD.  So in essence, I can reinstall SC4 in about a minute's time.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Aha!  I had this identical problem a while back, but got better diagnostics.  I had added a huge pack of buildings that had several hundred files in it.  My system came out and said it was out of file handles, then just stopped loading.  I thought it was something peculiar to Linux, so I never reported it.

 

I used Files2DAT to compress all those pesky files into a single *.dat, and the problem disappeared immediately.  I never did determine whether this was a game problem or a Linux problem.  According to all the Linux literature, the number of file handles is unlimited, but we all know what hubris operating systems people have.

 

Thinking back on it, I suspect the problem occurs if you have a large number of files in a single directory (folder).

[Sabretooth78 808]

I was able to replicate the failure in Parallels (running XP), so I'm assuming it's a game issue - although it could be some kind of OS issue like you experienced.  The threshold wasn't at the same exact place and the behavior was somewhat different but in the end, it didn't work.  It also seems to have jacked up my timbuktu region.  Looks like I'll be restoring a backup.  Now wait, upon a subsequent load, Timbuktu is normal again.  Yeah, you're definitely getting restored.

 

In any event, I think we can all agree that datpacking is an activity from which many benefits can be derived.  (And that the behavior is far less limiting than it is on the recent Aspyr port.) 

 

The biggest difference I noted, however, was load time to the region view.  I was sitting here watching Simpsons reruns on my HTPC and I was only getting 1 or 2 boots per episode.  Note to Mac users - Wine-based SC4 loads MUCH faster.

[Compdude787 916]

So, the Aspyr port isn't the only version of SC4 with a file limit in your plugins folder....

[Sabretooth78 808]

Evidently not.  Short of loading up the CD-based game (which I have no intention or desire to do) into Parallels, I can't conclude if it's a limitation with Amazon's direct download (at least as it was in May 2013) or an OS limitation as Nonny suggests is possible.  Even then, at the end of the day I can't do "better" than Parallels (basically an emulator) since my household his blessedly free of fully functioning Windows PCs.  Who is to say I wouldn't still see an issue where somebody running even a low-end "native" Windows PC won't.

 

The one configuration where I did determine an exact number worked out to 11513 total - 2015 folders (OS X doesn't list files/folders like Windows does but there's a trick to finding it) = 9498 files.  I don't know if this includes ALL files or just those readable by the game.  For instance, Mac OS X sticks a ".DS_Store" file in every folder to store custom icon attributes - think "desktop.ini" in Windows.  I don't know if it counts those, and I theoretically had 2015 of them - leaving 7483 .sc4lot, .sc4model, .sc4desc, .dat, etc. files.

 

Long story short, I don't know all the variables.  That said, say the practical limit is even just 7500 files - if you datpack (and if you have a significantly large suite I don't see any good reason not to at least pack some of them), and if the packed maximum is 400 MB per file (using Wouanagaine's as an example), that leads to a theoretical maximum of a little under 3 TB.  I would venture a guess we'd exceed some other limitation before hitting that one.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The limitation seems to kick in when there is an inordinate number of files in one subdirectory.  My research into the O/S indicates that while the number of file handles may be unlimited, the memory to contain them isn't.  The problem may be running out of file system space in memory tables.  I suspect that when your run out of ring 3 space, this is when you get this error.  Apparently this area doesn't page.  I have a 20 GB paging space.

[piercing_arrow 76]

Sorry to gravedig this thread, but for others who have this problem:

 

Another way to stop the processes is through Command Prompt (if you have Windows 7 or 8... I've only tried this on those OSes)

 

Go to Command Prompt (Press Ctrl + R and type in "cmd"). Once the box opens, type in exactly as follows: taskkill /f /im "SimCity 4.exe" /t

 

This will kill the program and any other programs that the main program has started. I find this more efficient to use than Task Manager. I've noticed that sometimes that it fails to fully kill the execution file, so I use the programming way for these type of things.

 

~Pax

[elavery 1,013]

Oddly enough I have run into trouble getting SC4 to start. I have not played the game for maybe 4 months, I put the disc in the drive today and the game will not load. I get the startup screen with the bridge but then nothing happens, except for one time when the game tried to load about 20 minutes after I attempted to start it.

[NCGAIO 562]

Delete SimCity 4.cfg file in folder MyDocuments \ Simcity4 or another depending on your setup.

 

It would be useful  inform the system and the used startup parameters, if existing of course.

 

(-intro: Off is an option for this)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

What has changed with respect to your system in the interval in which you did not play?  Also, I agree that we need chapter and verse of your machine.

 

One needs to have a care when giving syntax examples.  -intro:off

no spaces after the colon.

[elavery 1,013]

OK, so something changed overnight, now the desktop icon has disappeared altogether and I can't even get to the startup screen.

 

All the files are still on the computer however.

 

I am using Windows 7, SC4 Deluxe, HP Pavilion dv6-2155dx Entertainment Notebook.

[NCGAIO 562]

Order to help solve the problem will require that you try the things that are given and try to provide the answers for the questions OK! (PM)

In the first place try to do what I said above and starting the game through to click on the game executable in the installation folder.

 

One needs to have a care when giving syntax examples.  -intro:off

no spaces after the colon.

There was no instruction to do nothing but comment on the command line.

We do not know what he is using so why not waiting for the answers before commenting?

[elavery 1,013]

I can't even find anywhere to start the game anymore. I go to Computer>DVD RW Drive (F:) SC4DELUXE2>Run Game and nothing happens at all now. I also removed the SimCity.cfg file as you suggested.

[NCGAIO 562]

 Your executable Simcity 4.exe is in the game installation folder?
 

I go to Computer>DVD RW Drive (F:) SC4DELUXE2>Run Game

If you do not find the executable in the game installation folder check the quarantine of your antivirus.

 

 

[elavery 1,013]

No it is not. When I go into the C: Folder for SC4 I do not see Simcity4.exe.

[_Michael 2,681]

Perhaps do a system search for it, or check your anti-virus quarantine.