Please Help! - SimCity 4 Crash To Desktop

[SkeletonTiger 6]

Hello, everyone.

I have tried time and time again to find multiple 'fixes' for this problem. The game has not been starting for quite some time now, and I would really appreciate some help from the community.

Ok, so here is what is happening.

Whenever I attempt to open my game, I get to the screen with the EA symbol and my computer takes me back to the desktop without any error-type messages. I am not too good with computers, so I apologize if I misunderstand some things. I will answer all questions to the best of my ability, and I have an Acer Aspire PC.

Thank you!

[chimeran 208]

add -CPUCount:1 to the target line should fix most CTD's

here is a vid i made to explain it

  Edited October 23, 2012 by chimeran  

[jdenm8 362]

Whenever I attempt to open my game, I get to the screen with the EA symbol and my computer takes me back to the desktop without any error-type messages. I am not too good with computers, so I apologize if I misunderstand some things. I will answer all questions to the best of my ability, and I have an Acer Aspire PC.

Disable the introduction videos with the -intro:off switch. Your crashes may be caused by a corrupted intro movie file.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

As usual, people have leapt in without the facts.

What version of the game do you have (simcity 4, simcity 4 deluxe, simcity 4 deluxe digital download)?

What machine are you running (details) and what operating system.

If you loaded the game from disks, did you patch it with the published patches?

And yes, I do recommend getting rid of the movie with -intro:off, but you need to know how to do that.

[SkeletonTiger 6]

As usual, people have leapt in without the facts.

What version of the game do you have (simcity 4, simcity 4 deluxe, simcity 4 deluxe digital download)?

What machine are you running (details) and what operating system.

If you loaded the game from disks, did you patch it with the published patches?

And yes, I do recommend getting rid of the movie with -intro:off, but you need to know how to do that.

I apologize for being rather vague with the information, I was in a bit of a hurry at the moment.

I have SimCity 4 Deluxe. I have downloaded the published patches, and I am running Windows Vista Home Premium.

My computer runs an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, and my graphics are run by an ATI Radeon HD2400Pro graphics card.

Again, I apologize. I don't tend to do well with computer technology.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, I hope you can make these changes. They will probably help you.

On your desktop, right click on the SC4 shortcut and open the properties dialogue. One of the items in there is a text box with a label of, I think I remember, Target. It contains the complete path name of your game enclosed in quotes.

Click your mouse in this box and press the End key. This should move you past the final quote mark.

Press the space bar once and type in -intro:off -CPUcount:1 -d:software -f

Press the button that updates the properties (I forget what it says).

These changes do the following: Turn off the advertising movie; set to use only one processor; selects software rendering; full screen.

The last two options cut out some of the things that make life difficult for the program. In particular, software rendering bypasses your GPU, removing it as a possible issue. It will be used only as a frame buffer. Going full screen eliminates the overhead of having to handle a window.

Let us know if this helps.

[SkeletonTiger 6]

Well, I hope you can make these changes. They will probably help you.

On your desktop, right click on the SC4 shortcut and open the properties dialogue. One of the items in there is a text box with a label of, I think I remember, Target. It contains the complete path name of your game enclosed in quotes.

Click your mouse in this box and press the End key. This should move you past the final quote mark.

Press the space bar once and type in -intro:off -CPUcount:1 -d:software -f

Press the button that updates the properties (I forget what it says).

These changes do the following: Turn off the advertising movie; set to use only one processor; selects software rendering; full screen.

The last two options cut out some of the things that make life difficult for the program. In particular, software rendering bypasses your GPU, removing it as a possible issue. It will be used only as a frame buffer. Going full screen eliminates the overhead of having to handle a window.

Let us know if this helps.

This works - but only partially. The game will now start, but I can move my mouse around only for a few seconds before it crashes.

  Edited October 23, 2012 by BeatlesFan789  

[chimeran 208]

do you have mods installed or is it a clean version ?

[SkeletonTiger 6]

It is a clean game.

[chimeran 208]

hmmm, that's odd never head of cpucount not fixing it but here is the advanced menu

add these different properties for different effects each with a space in between it and its predicessor:

[code=Window Mode]-w[/code]

To change back to full use -f (if that doesn't work follow this tutorial by Chrisim) (I believe this needs a -r command after it to make sure it works, it is advised to add -r800x600x32)

[code=Software Rendering mode]-d:Software[/code]

[code=No Sounds or Music]-audio:off[/code]

Turns all the audio output off

[code=Resolution Change]-r[W]x[Y]x[Z][/code]

Where:

WxY is a resolution (without using -CustomResolution:enable the screen resolution has to be either: 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024)

Z is colour depth (32 or 16)

[code=No Intro Videos]-Intro:off[/code]

Turns the introductory splash screen and video off, instead taking you straight to the game

Options for the More Advanced User

[code=Custom Resolution]-CustomResolution:enabled[/code]

Enables custom resolutions including the 16:9 ratio

[code=Rendering Mode]-d:DirectX/Software/OpenGL[/code]

Change the rendering mode of the game, either using DirectX or OpenGL libraries or software rendering

[code=Processor Options]-CPUPriority:low
-CPUCount:X[/code]

Where x is the number of the processors your computer has.

CPUPriority lets other processes (programs) use the processor more when the game isnt in use.

[code=Brown Box Removal]-IgnoreMissingModelDataBugs:on/off[/code]

Off (default) shows all missing models as brown boxes.

On just doesn't show anything for them at all.

[code=Background Loading]-BackgroundLoader:on/off[/code]

On (default) loads all the none visible models in the background, whereas Off doesnt

[code=Language]-l:english[/code]

Change english to a language to change the language (well duhh) only works if you have the language sets.

Valid languages are: English, German, UK English, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese. (check this thread out for more info on changing languages)

Options for the SUPER Advanced User

Warning: Not all effects are known.

[code]-AllowMultipleInstances[/code]

Allows the player to launch additional application instances after the first one. By default, an attempt to run a second instance of the app will merely call forth the first instance of the application.

[code=cursor magic]-Cursors:disabled/bw/color16/color256/fullcolor -CustomCursors:disabled[/code]

Sets the color depth of the game cursors. Some hardware doesn't like some cursor color depths. Disables the use of application-supplied versions of standard system cursors such as the arrow or hand cursor. Normally, the customized application-supplied versions are used.

[code]-ExceptionHandling:off[/code]

Disables application exception handling, which provides for safer shutdown of the app in case of a crash.

[code]-gp[/code]

Enables game pausing when you switch to another application. This is useful for if you go away from the game and you want it to sleep while it is in the background. This is a stronger form of the -CPUPriority command line option.

[code]-IgnoreMissingModelDataBugs:on/off[/code]

If enabled, then the system does nothing when requested to display an object for which there is no graphical representation. By default this option is disabled and objects that are missing a graphical representation are drawn as a large "package" that suggests you can download the graphics for this object from the SimCity web site or similar.

[code]-IME:enabled/disabled[/code]

Enables application-supplied IME (input method editing) for Asian systems. If disabled, then the default operating system IME will take control. By default, IME is enabled. If it is disabled via this command line option, you'll probably want to run the app in windowed mode (-w) in order to take advantage of the OS-supplied IME GUI.

[code]-RenderProp:,value -RenderProp:" value"[/code]

Forces a render property to be set. See documentation on render properties for a discussion of them. You can use this command line multiple times on a single command line.

[code]-Restart[/code]

This is an internal command line used to indicate that a prior instance of the app launched the current instance while it was shutting down. This causes the current instance to wait for the previous instance to fully exit before proceeding. This is useful for automatic app restarting during certain operations.

[code=Change Path]-UserDir:path[/code]

Specifies the directory where the users game directory is. If the default subdirectories of "Regions\", "Plugins\", and "HTTPCache\" arn't found, then it creates an instance of, (in the case of Regions, it copies the default set over). The default game data directory defaults to being the same directory as the game installation directory. Quotes are necessary if the path name has spaces. Make sure there is a "\" on the end of your path or it creates directories like "testPlugins\" and "testRegions\"

[code]-WriteLog:on/off[/code]

If On, this causes the app to write a log file that describes the user's system configuration. The file is named "computer-config-log.txt" and is placed in the same directory as the program executable.

[code]-CodePage:id[/code]

Sets the code page portion of the locale for the C runtime library. Normally, the code page is determined by the language the application runs in (see the -l command line option)

[code]-ConfigLog:server | off[/code]

Sets the destination of where to write the computer configuration log specified by the -WriteLog command line option. By default, the server is "studiotech.max.ad.ea.com"

[SkeletonTiger 6]

Hello! Sorry it took such a long time for me to respond. I used the "-audio:off" command, and the game runs smoother than it ever has! I've been playing for about an hour now, and it's a great experience to be able to again. Thank you all for your help! It is greatly appreciated.