Random Crash to Desktop

[sc4freak 0]

Hi, I've been a member here for a while, but only recently have I decided to get back to playing SimCity. The problem is, SimCity constantly crashed back to desktop at seemingly random times. Recently I installed new hardware, but I am pretty sure it is not the hardware's fault since all my other games work fine. I have quite a powerful system, and SC4 runs really fast, but I can barely play because every 10-15 minutes it crashes back to desktop without warning. Here are my system specifications:

Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 3.4ghz

ATI Radeon X1800XT 512mb

1.5gb 675mhz Corsair DDR2 RAM

Asus P5GD2 Deluxe

Western Digital 200gb 7200RPM 8mb cache

Antec Truepower II 550w

SimCity 4 Deluxe

 

I have my paging file set to 1.5gb, which amounts to 3gb of total memory available for use. Does anyone know why SC4 constantly crashes without warning? Is this a known problem or is it just me?

[reg.asp 0]

That's quite a system you got there.

First of all, make sure everything is up to date. (common sense)

Tweak around with the video settings by trying to change refresh rates or activating v-sync. The wierdest things can often fix the problem.

Your memory can also definately be a problem. Remeber to turn off any useless applications before playing SimCity. Most importantly review the results you get by searching Crash in the technical/bugs forum.
Here's some:
https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=29276&forumID=24&search=1&searchstring=
https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=32730&forumID=22&search=1&searchstring=
https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=30693&forumID=24&search=1&searchstring=

BTW: I'm not sure what the recommended paging file size is for that amount of memory so just try setting it to system managed.

[ky72x 13]

No, it's not just you, I have 3 gigs of memory left too, and it happens,once in a while. This is why I transfered my cities and files to a computer with 15.7 gigs of memory left. Some ppl say it's because of your video card, but I dunno...

[Oldrogue 9]

Hi, I guess I'm the latest in this community to have this problem also.  

System is an HP with:

    AMD 64 3300+

    1.81 Ghz

    1 Gig of ram

    video card is a NVDIA  GeForce FX 5700ve

 

am running XP home version

SC4 is the deluxe edition

 

Bought the system and game 10 months ago from Best Buy and everything was fine until this week.  Have (make that had) ton's of stuff from Stex, and had found some of this would make the system go a little bit slow at times...... when it started crashing to desktop I uninstalled the game,  (all I saved were some of the regions), reinstalled the game and downloaded some add ons from here (Peg stuff I love, some of the BSC essentials and a few other things).   System would crash when loading the game but was able to play for a little while on a small region (fairview), crashes when going into the larger regions.   Ran the O&O defrag today and the game loaded ok, but when went into a larger region (nothing in the region, it was still non built on) the game crashed....not even to desktop...it just went away.

 

Sheese.

 

Am wondering if this isn't a problem with the software that maybe I should have to go out and buy a new boxed copy of SC4?   It's all beyond me and any help would be appreciated.

 

THanks for listening

[Tolomar 5]

doubt it's your system or the game...it wouldn't have installed corrctly if there was scratch or something

 

there are a number of things that can make a city crash to the desk top... though it only happening on large cities does seem strange...try running the game with just the official stuff first...see if it runs that way.  maybe not enough virtal memory to cover all the plugins ?

 

 

since you re-installed...did you first delete the official sites patch log and redo all the official patchs

 

think having the patch log in your game from before may trick the official site auto detect, making it think you have them already when you actually don't..might not be the problem but start with the simple stuff first

 

personelly i don't trust their auto-installer i did all the official stuff manually (yea it takes a while but lets you know it's all there correctly) make sure you get the proper patches for your version of the game

 

 

 

I don't use much of Peg's mod's myself...could it be 1 or more of his mods conflicting with each other one of his or another mod or a lot ?

 

if you have an orginized plugins folder the most trusted method is to take 1/2 the plugins and just put them in and try the game saving the others outside the game...if the game doesn't crash it's not in that part of the plugins

 if it does the problem lies in the 1/2...and just keep going in 1/2's ,keep doing this and widdle down plugins til you find the problem lot or mod

 

if all work it could be a conflict between mods

[Urbangrl1nine82 0]

I was having that problem yesterday too, but mine would barely go to the EA games logo, before it crashed. I just restarted my computer and didn't close as many programs as I did the first time...it worked fine after that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If your system is doing restarts, change the option in My Computer -> properties to not restart. You will then get a Blue screen of death instead of a restart. This will tell you a little more. If the crash was in a driver, it will tell you that. To restart after one of these, you have to do a manual power off.

At one time I was having these problems and it turned out to be my new sound driver I had just got from Microsoft's update site. I reverted to the HP driver set that came with my machine and the problem went away. I was later able to download a new set of drivers for my machine model from HP.

[bourneid 13]

Question....do you have a creative sound card and if so have you recently udated the drives and the creative player?

 

The reason I ask is becuase the last update they put out had some bugs in it and a new version has been put out....I had a problem with it. Other games played fine, just when certain sounds would play it would crash SC4....such as laying out streets or plopping power plants. I traced it back to the sound card and updated them...and I no longer have the crashes 

 

urban,....it was doing that to me to.....I used the -intro:off shortcut desination to stop the intro from playing but the game would crash when the region music would play....it started with just the citys crashing as I stated above....but soon I started having the same problem as you... Try running DXdiag and see if you get a warning when it does the system test while loading....if it says that the sound driver did not pass you have a sound card issue

[SamFlash 0]

You have a great system but a very common complaint.  Unless someone here gets lucky and makes a great guess your probably going to have to solve this yourself. 

Start by eliminating software problems with the game itself.  Uninstall the game and load in SC4 Deluxe without any patches, updates or custom stuff from the Simtropolis.  If it lasts longer than 15 minutes without crashing then add one update or patch at a time, playing in between, until it crashes.  When it crashes you've found your problem.  If it crashes on a clean install before the patches and updates, then you know it is probably in your hardware.  The 3 main places to start are the videocard, soundcard and ram. 

 

Once you get to this point post back and I or someone else will give you some help with troubleshooting those items if you need help.  Good luck. 

[Oldrogue 9]

Wow, this really IS a community....... Have  gotten severl emails and quite a few responses....... I wish I could remember who said it, but I remembered having done some automatic updates the day before this problem started!  Took out the January 10th Microsoft update and so far, no more problems.....  Hmmmmm Microsoft wouldn't make a mistake would they?  Ah well, hopefully that will solve the problem..and I want to sincerly thank all that read this and offered advice.   What a great group.

 

Duane

[Tolomar 5]

Glad you were able to find the problem...were happy your now simming your cities

[Screwballl 196]

this has been a problem for wuite some time.. this game doesn;t play well with unfamiliar hardware... most namely newer video cards because it doesn;t know how to render properly.. this first started showing its uygly head with the release of the nvidia 60000 series cards and now the newer ATi cards are having the same problem...
this is a case of new hardware that doesn't play well with the software (in most cases).

[Avid6eek 0]

I've run into this problem when I pushed overclocks too far.  It is possible that your system is running too warm when it is under heavy load for a long period of time.  Wouldn't surprise me at all with a Prescott P4.  It is common for this type of instability to occur only when gaming because it is the time when the two biggest producers of system heat, video and processor, are running at full load.

[dussin23 1]

This is probably the funnest game ever as far as I'm concerned. It just fits my personality. Mine doesn't crash randomly, really, but it does crash a lot when zooming. There's apparently no fix for that. It also freezes a lot when I'm trying to save. So it's damned if I do, and damned if I don't.

It's gotten to the point at which I've tried to quit playing, but I find myself loading the program anyway.