Guaranteed SimCity 4 on Windows 7 Fix - 1 Step

[Mechalic 26]

Note: This is in reference to Windows 7 64 bit / 1 step instant guaranteed performance and running with absolutely ZERO CRASHES EVER!

Over time, I've read so many 'fix's' or attempted 'fix's' for installing and successfully running Simcity 4 on a windows 7 PC,

from setting the affinity, or switching to compatibility mode, administrator, or windowed mode.

I've tried pretty much all these and I still had problems, and I know of many players whom simply have held on dearly to the XP operating system, which is now

so far out dated, considering it was released 12 years ago.

The problem people have with installing Simcity 4, rush hour or whichever, is they allow it to auto install in the C:\Program Files (x86) directory, as we know,

any changes in this directory require admin authorisation, and for some reason it just does not work well with Simcity 4.

I simply installed it in C:\Program Files, note that it is not the (x86) directory. This directory has free reign and does not require admin for changes,

anyways the point of all this, is I have now clocked over 120 hours of game play, with over 200 plug-ins, and had absolutely not 1, crash. I have it running on max graphics,

max everything, and it runs perfectly.

This fix is so simple, so extremely basic, I'm not sure why I have never seen it posted anywhere on the net on any site, perhaps this has already been covered, It is something so basic, I would be surprised if it hadn't already. But the main thing is, IT WORKS!

Mechalic

* Note : Please post on here, if this has worked for you as well

  Edited April 17, 2012 by sydney_smooth19  

[EXVAS3221 5]

I will have to try this, never done this.

[Mechalic 26]

I will have to try this, never done this.

Let me know how you go

[EXVAS3221 5]

I will have to try this, never done this.

Let me know how you go

i will, man

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Interesting that bypassing some fix Microsoft thought was needed has fixed an old problem. Let us know, everyone that tries this. Out of interest, I may also try this on wine under Linux because, frankly, it is just a nuisance.

Interesting that bypassing some fix Microsoft thought was needed has fixed an old problem. Let us know, everyone that tries this. Out of interest, I may also try this on wine under Linux because, frankly, it is just a nuisance.

[Mister Giggles 310]

Hmm...while I question whether this actually works, the same effect can be achieved by doing the following (No re-installing!). It assumes you have administrator privileges.

1: Right click on the Maxis folder in C:\Program Files (x86).

2: Click on Properties.

3: Click the Security Tab.

4: Click the "Edit" button.

5: Click on the "Users" entry in the "Group or user names" box. It will have the computer's name in parenthesis after it.

6: Check the "Full Control" check box in the box below the "Group or user names" box.

7: Click the Apply button at the bottom right of the window.

  Edited April 20, 2012 by Mister Giggles  

[Moskva 75]

Sydney_smooth, i am displeased but i've tryed that, without any success. However i was just curious, in fact i run the game quite good, with just few crashes. I tryed moving the game to the non x86 program files folder, then things went very bad, not better. Then i changed back to x86 and fixed the game, now runs great like before. Computers are weird things.

[jakehh 52]

Mine's always been installed into C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis

Never seen a problem with it. Seeing as it's just a folder name, and When it installs, it would write a Registry entry to tell windows where it is.

[Mechalic 26]

Well I used to have non stop issues, crashes and terrible performance under the (x86) folder, as changes, or anything in that file require administrator access.

And all I can say is that since changing it, i can guarantee I have not had a single crash, and that is on max graphics and performance. It's a shame not everyone has experienced this.

[runjonah1 0]

Crazy as it may seem, I don't install my game directly on to my OS HDD. I simply think that the OS should be untainted by games, etc. Therefore I put my games on the second drive which I have partioned just for this. I think most of my issues have been in my settings.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Crazy as it may seem, I don't install my game directly on to my OS HDD. I simply think that the OS should be untainted by games, etc. Therefore I put my games on the second drive which I have partitioned just for this. I think most of my issues have been in my settings.

That shouldn't cause any problems if you installed the game on the second partition. The registry entries will point to it. Having an uncontaminated O/S is a very good idea. Very hard to do with Microsoft which has so many incestuous ideas.

[SC4Fanatic 3]

Sounds like an interesting solution to fix SC4 crashes.

On my PC, a Windows 7 64-bit PC, SC4 rarely crashed. But sometimes it crashed 4 times on a single evening.

I found this solution: SC4 was made at a time that dual and quad cores still didn't exist. SC4 can't handle those processors very well and that can result in sudden crashes. After starting SC4, go to task manager and set the affinity of the SC4 process to one of the cores of your processor. Too bad you have to do this each time when you start SC4, but the result is an absolutely crash free SC4.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Sounds like an interesting solution to fix SC4 crashes.

On my PC, a Windows 7 64-bit PC, SC4 rarely crashed. But sometimes it crashed 4 times on a single evening.

I found this solution: SC4 was made at a time that dual and quad cores still didn't exist. SC4 can't handle those processors very well and that can result in sudden crashes. After starting SC4, go to task manager and set the affinity of the SC4 process to one of the cores of your processor. Too bad you have to do this each time when you start SC4, but the result is an absolutely crash free SC4.

You can get rid of the manual intervention by adding the parameter -CPUCount:1 to the target line in your shortcut.

Just open the shortcut for editing add a space after the closing quote on the pathname and add the option exactly as above.

[sHnozZa 165]

2 hours without a crash. So far so good....

[FirePowerCrog 1]

I just installed this for the first time on windows 7 today and I was having performance issues. Zooming in and out was laggy, scrolling was laggy and it was just overall not as good as it was on my xp computer. I changed the settings with no improvement at all. So I found this thread, reinstalled in the regular program files and now it runs great. Thanks.

[supergaga 2]

so i must instal it in Program Files not Program Files(x86)?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

so i must instal it in Program Files not Program Files(x86)?

Apparently programs installed in the ...(x86) folder provoke some special treatment from W7 that seriously interferes. I found this true in running under wine with Linux as well, so whatever MS did is duplicated in the wine layer.

Are we seeing the tip of the iceberg where MS thinks they don't need to support 32-bit x86 code for much longer and have taken some wrong actions in that regard? Why should they think they can get away with that? When I installed the game under a recent wine system, I got that directory created by default. I fixed it by killing the game and reinstalling it without the silly suffix.

[OskarStockholm 2]

I have my Sim City installed on C:\Games . As well as added CPUCount-1. It only crashes when the memory or processing power gets over heated.

[KimB 3]

I picked up this game again after a many year hiatus and found it kept crashing on me. I have Windows 7 x64 on a pretty strong build desktop and had already tried setting the game to use only one processor - that didn't help. I was getting crashes every 30-45 minutes - crash to solid random color screen. I applied this solution and have not had a single crash since.

Thanks for the fix!

[ProcessGamer 3]

Hello,

        i am having the same problem with my simcity 4, i have some mods at 2GB and i did everything to stop the crashing to the desktop such as putting in the target line -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32 -intro:Off -CPUCount:1 -EH:Off -CPUPriority:high from the forum that i visited in simtropolis one said and it doesn't work at all. also i have Windows 7 Home Premium (after got a virus and wipe out the whole computer which it used to be vista) also the file is in the Programs File not the Program Files x86 thanks for taking the time reading this and have a nice day!  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Hello,

        i am having the same problem with my simcity 4, i have some mods at 2GB and i did everything to stop the crashing to the desktop such as putting in the target line -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32 -intro:Off -CPUCount:1 -EH:Off -CPUPriority:high from the forum that i visited in simtropolis one said and it doesn't work at all. also i have Windows 7 Home Premium (after got a virus and wipe out the whole computer which it used to be vista) also the file is in the Programs File not the Program Files x86 thanks for taking the time reading this and have a nice day!  

Already taken in hand.  Suggest it is a little uncouth to spray the same message all over the board in hopes of getting an answer sooner.  This is an international board, and answers may be quite slow in coming.  Please stop doing this.

[Hammel 1]

Hi,

 

I also suffered under this random crash to desktop every 15min (or so) and non of the suggested solutions helped me. 

 

But....

 

Finally I solved it, at least on my machine. The problem on my machine were the onboard realtek HD audio and the Nvidia Audio (which is included in the nvidia driver). I disabled the nvidia audio (and updated the realtek driver simply to be sure) and no further crashes for 4 hours now.

 

I hope I could help someone with this.

 

My System:

Mainboard gigybyte Z77-DS3H

Windows7 x64

GTX 670 OC

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I suppose this can happen if you have more than one media system.  This old trooper of a game is not designed for such things.

[EtheB 0]

I've only recently retired XP and moved "up" to Win 7 SP1.

Watching with complete dismay the train wreck which is the latest Simcity release, I decided to see if I could get SC4 running.

 

Thanks to those whom have posted suggestions - I seem to have a very stable install without any significant issues.

 

For those interested, I installed to ProgramFiles (original SC4, then SC4 RH, then patch), configured the shortcut with the target extras of  -intro:Off -CPUCount:1 , run maximised and disabled visual themes. I'm not running in any XP compatibility mode nor with Admin privileges selected.

My card is an NVidia 9800GT with ver 314.07 drivers. Sound is the motherboard Realtek with ver 6.0.1.6662 drivers.

Anti virus is ESET Nod32 6.0.314.0 set to gamer mode before executing SC4. This setting seems rather important else my system takes forever to actually get the game running.

 

I've seen some strange graphic issues (such as multi colour EL train lines), but nothing major and from what I can tell they seem to be those glitches already being reported due to the NAM 31 mod - which I have to say is an amazing update!

 

I have SC4 graphics set to run 32bit hardware and only use 1024x768.

I get the odd glitch with audio - it sort of replays a few seconds, but nothing that really matters.

Performance wise it seems to run at least as solid as it did with XP SP3.

[ravensuominen 0]

I'll give stabilizing the old SC4 another try, too. New Sim City is in the mail, but I'm already getting a feeling I prefer the old one...

[larcic 0]

Hi everybody.

 

Related to this topic, I've noticed that my Simcity 4 Deluxe Rush Hour crashes systematically only for some cities and when the time reaches a certain date. For example, I can play relentlessly in one city without crashing a single time, but when I move to another city, usually while experiencing a booming in high rise buildings, when time reaches one date it crashes; I tried to save the city many times, up to the day before the crashing day, but when I reopen that city I always experience the same problem. The only solution seems to be deleting the city and starting a new one, even though the networking with connected cities may suffer a bit.

 

Of course I have lots of plug-ins and NAM (around 3GB); I had this problem even before starting downloading. It looks strange that EA and Maxis did not release any patch to solve this issue.

 

Thanks

[Shark7 118]

Since this is a thread more or less dedicated to SC4 stability in Win7, I have a tip that may or may not help some out.

 

Be sure when you install it to set both the application execute file and the shortcut to 'Run as Administrator'.  I do this with all my games, (as some older games can't save if you don't), and it really does seem to stabilize some of the issues.

 

While you will get that annoying little pop-up every time you start the game, its better than crashing constantly.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Actually, it sounds like a plugin conflict.  Have you cleaned up all the junk files in that 3GB of yours.  A file of that size is over the limit of 32-bit addressing in memory for SC4, and it will be shaved by the loader.  However, you can speed up your loading time by getting rid of any file that is not a Plugin data file.  The data files are: .sc4lot, .sc4desc, .sc4model, .dat, and .dll.  Anything else is documentation and doesn't belong in the Plugins folder.  The game treats this as noise and ignores it, but still has to read it to see if it is part of its data.

 

Also, with a plugin set up of that size, I urge you to take a look, in detail and carefully, at the program DATpacker that condenses plugins into sets of .dat files.  This program reduces the actual number of files to reduce the disk overheads in the game.  Some mods may not be packed (NAM is one of them).

[johnnyx10 0]

VirtualBox.
It's the only thing that worked for me.
Thought the suggestions on this page were the most helpful (esp. the CPUCount switch - nice) so I came back to post what worked for me.

The game worked great for a few weeks, then started to inexplicably crash, mostly only when I worked a certain area on specific map. None of this helped. I was jacked up...

 

Banged my head against this problem for a few days before I remembered the XP virtual machine I had made to play SimCity3K.
Fired it up and installed SimCity4.

It's been almost a month now: flawless victory.

 

So, make sure you have a decent amount of RAM.
Get VirtualBox or some other VM software. (Virtual Box is free)
Install XP on your new virtual machine.
Install all the old games you love.
Rejoice.

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, that is certainly one way to fly.  What machine are you running again?  Sounds like a MAC with OS/X.

 

Oh, and soft spots in a city tile that may cause a crash are usually the result of a slope mod.  I've given up on them.