Black Boxes Displaying

[rweather5 22]

When I zoom in close to my city, I get all these black spots on the screen.  When I zoom out, it looks fine.  I am running Windows 8.1 64-bit.  SimCity 4 is running in compatibility mode for Windows XP and as an administrator.

[CapTon 592]

Even with compatibility mode and such, there will still be problems experienced because of Windows 8. I am running SC4 in Windows 7 Compatibility Mode, and I experience a bug which causes my water pipelines to appear black and all messed up just a glitch you'll probably have to deal with.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The best solution is to retro to Windows 7 if possible.  Windows 8 seems to have graphics driver problems, probably due to inadequate quality assurance either by Microsoft or the driver authors.  Next best is to try to back out your graphics drivers to an earlier version.

 

Failing all this, there is always a Linux decor, but if you have a new machine you'll have to learn to fix the UEFI mess created by MS.

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Here's another solution: Buy a second hand computer for 40 or 50 bucks and install Windows XP and use it only for those "older games". That's what I do. Never had, nor have any problems.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

One thing to note that it seems to be a Windows 8.1 specific problem with the graphics drivers. I only get this on Windows 8.0 sometimes when I un-focus my SimCity 4 window (in windowed mode) during loading of a city tile. But those are quite specific conditions...

Also, this is what happens when you leave the game running during a hibernation session and then you started up your PC again:

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ Sure says something about the debugged status of Windows, eh?