Corrupted city files in SimCity 4

[mitsos 12,853]

Hi everyone, i have this issue again and i know that corrupted city file has been discussed extensively in the past. I was wandering if something has changed through all these years or corrupted city files will be always corrupted and nothing can be done. We stuck in a game 17 years old and I'm sick of trying to make compatible the game  with nowdays technology and  still having all these problems. 4 of my best cities that i spent many many hours are causing me trouble. I'm seriously  thinking to stop playing this game. Unfortunately all other city build games aren't good enough, what's why we keep playing this stone age game. 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

9 hours ago, mitsos said:

I was wandering if something has changed through all these years or corrupted city files will be always corrupted

I seem to recall that the SC4Fix.dll cleared up prop pox. There has also been some research into editing saved game files to correct a few errors. YMMV depending on what caused your corruption (and whether you have even diagnosed what the cause was).

[rsc204 21,808]

If you are suffering from this issue, something is very wrong and this is in no way either normal or to be expected. Compatibility problems tend to be limited to GPU support, there is no way such an issue could lead to such problems.

Three major causes that would perhaps explain such corruption:

1. Interrupting the save process
   If you try to do something else such that the Save operation of SC4 does not get the systems 'full attention', it can corrupt save files. If you are doing this, either directly by task switching (ALT+Tab) or through background apps, well don't. The other potential cause happens when using either the Save and Exit to Region or Save and Quit options. Sometimes the game will move to the Exit/Quit part before the save properly completes, this is the one you can pin on Maxis. That said, they never anticipated and would not have tested, the additional load of mods or using cities as big as we can today. So even that is somewhat forgivable. It is a good idea for all players to avoid using either option and instead, manually saving your city (CTRL+S), then using either Exit without Saving or Quit without Saving instead. This invaluable mod will make it impossible to click the problem options, so you never accidentally do it.
2. Prop Pox
   This is a very specific issue that could occur only if using one very specific file (mod), PEG-OWW2_BDK_RESOURCE.dat. If this is the problem, using the latest version of SC4Fix both prevents it and allows restoration of affected save files. Likewise the file on the STEX and two lot packages that use it have been recently updated to prevent issues.
3. Other mods
   It is possible that somehow, one or many mods in your plugins folder are behind your troubles. It's impossible to be more specific, but if your game works without mods, but has problems with mods, you probably need to check through them to try and find any problem files.

If none of the above scenarios fit, then you must be suffering from either

• Application incompatibility / conflicts
  Most common is security/anti-virus software, preventing or messing with things. If you think this may apply to you, shut down all the background apps and processes on your machine that you can. Then run SC4 to see if the problem goes away. In this scenario, you'd keep turning them back on one at a time, until the issue popped up again and you'll know what app might be causing trouble.
• Hardware Issues
  Are you certain your Hard Drive is correctly functioning and does not contain bad sectors? Yes, typically such faults will not simply affect a single application, but it's not impossible either for only data used by it to reside in a damaged part of your drive. A full scan of all sectors using Check Disk is probably not a bad idea, if for nothing else to rule out any HDD problems. It can take a VERY long time on a large disk though.

8 hours ago, mitsos said:

We stuck in a game 17 years old and I'm sick of trying to make compatible the game  with nowdays technology and  still having all these problems.

The fact is, running games on a PC will NEVER be like running them on a console, it's not Plug and Play. Sure, things aren't so bad these days compared with when I started. However you must understand that trying to run a game designed for Windows XP and very different hardware, Pentium 4 machines and older. There is only so much any developer can do to ensure a game continues to work when it's this old. Frankly SC4 has held up remarkably well all things considered, but yes very new or specific hardware may not work without doing a little work first. This is very much par for the course if you want to play legacy PC games like this. I've spent days trying to get some games running reliably, usually it can be done but it's a lot of work.

If SC4 means that much to you, perhaps consider getting a cheap second hand system that is more in tune with the code. Something like a late Core2Duo based system running Windows XP natively with a half decent (for it's time) GPU. That wouldn't cost much more than 100€ second hand, better still if you get a slim form factor machine, suitable ex-business Lenovo and Dell units are pretty easy to find, it's not like you need to keep two full PCs around either.

[mitsos 12,853]

Thank you guys for your respond. I already run windows xp . I kept my old machine just for sc4. I demolished  all the buildings in the city and then saved it. The city loaded without any problem so I suppose that is a plugin conflict. I tried several times to transfer the game to windows 7 without success. Yes sc4 means a lot to me that's why I try to keep running a 13years old machine. Thank you again for your help.