Crashing Blues

[snappo 0]

I installed Simcity 4 Deluxe Edition last week, and I've been consistantly crashing about 30 mintues into playing. It usually occurs when saving, but it also oocurs when clicking on a button and drag the screen.

I've searched around the board, and I saw increasing your page file might work. No luck here. I change my page file and it still is crashing.

I try saving alot but it still sucked going for 30 minutes only to lose all my work because I forgot to save.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance!

My system specs:

Simcity 4 Deluxe Edition (includes Rush Hour) - Latest update
Operating System:
Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2     
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A08
Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.06GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 340MB used, 2087MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Video Card:
Card name: RADEON 9800 XT
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON 9800 XT AGP (0x4E4A)
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Dell 1901FP (Digital)
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6517 (English)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Put your page file up to 3072MB and your max to 4096. With 1GB of memory, you shouldn't be getting this.

How large is your set of plugins (if any). Plugins load into meoory and remain there.

Check to see if you have the most recent version of all your drivers including the ones for your mother board. At one point, I got one for my CPU, and a BIOS flash as well.

How often do you defrag your disk? This program creates large, multiple extent files when saving. The more often you save, the messier it gets. You should defrag at least once a week.

Edit: Have your run the DirectX diagnostic? {run dxdiag}

[tungston 19]

Snappo:

I don't think there is a solution, other than saving more often. I have more memory than you, and still the game will crash. It is just the poor architecture of SC4, it is a memory hog. The faster the machine is the faster it can flood the memory. Saving, zooming, and scolling adds to the memory load, and adds the straw that breaks the camels back, so to speak.

[Constantina 5]

I think some lots are know to cause crashes, or probrably becasue you placed a puzzle piece over a mass transit lot. That might be the problem.

[Alkaola 18]

i have also every 30 minutes playing crashes ... its s

[dwayner 1]

I think almost everyone will have simcity crash at least once or more. I have 2 gigs of ddr2 ram. Upgraded from 1.5ddr ram and this seems to help a lot. My game has only crashed once in the last 3 months. This from what used to be a daily occurence. The game might be a few years old but I find that it is the most memory hog out of all the games I own. I still run defrag once a month and save often when playing at leat every 15 mintes. I say get another stick of 1 gig ram and see if there's improvement.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Strangely enough, I only have 768MB of RAM of which 128 is taken by my integrated graphics card. I haven't had a crash until last night in a long time. Last night I had a hang while saving crash and had to kill the game. The file was OK, and hadn't been updated since the last save.

Just a note on all these brobdingnaginan machines. Maybe a lot of memory is too much.

[Brightstar 0]

Funnily enough I might have something to add here, that if we can locate it might help a little.........maybe.........  
I had a functioning game - no crashes (at least not for the last year or so) but some minor bugs that I couldn't find a solution for.....
So - bright idea (NOT!) I decided it was time to clean up and reinstall as I had a bunch of stuff with no idea what it related to..........
Now my game crashes regularly.  I don't think its a plugin as I have tested  all of them one by one - twice.  All of them are from reliable sources - or they are plugins I used before for more than a year.  I have also checked prop packs etc
The only thing I can't double check are traffic and data mods etc as that area isn't online here yet.
I do remember however a thread on the "old" site that talked about game settings.  Now if I can recall correctly there were optimum settings for graphics etc.  I know that fixed my crashing problems when I first installed my game a few years ago.  Now of course if I had remembered that and written them down b4 I reinstalled...............well I would know if it worked.  Anyhow - I can't find the thread that was on........
Anyone remember?  Could be a sloution for some of us...........

[Skink000 0]

For what it is worth, I have 2gig of ddr2 and once in a great while I get dumped to my desktop. I have been playing a map that is 60 km square with half a dozen small cities and once in a great while ill find myself looking at my desktop.

[darman 1]

I have the same problem, but my game crashes literally every 5 minutes! No joke, I play for about 3 to 5 minutes and it crashes again and again. I tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it, but it didn't fix anything. I have a Dell XPS and I have plenty of memory and my drivers are up to date. If anyone could help me in any way it would be great.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@darman:  There are so many models by Dell, we need to see the configuration.  If you don't know it, please get it by running System Information.

I think you should post this problem in a new thread.  Please refer to the bug reporting sticky and start a new thread on this.

[Mantis747 1]

I have also had the same problem, it ever only crashed once in the middle of saving it.

but a couple of years ago it used to crash prettey much all the time, for some reason it dosen't really crash now!

[Koronin 0]

I played SC4/RH a lot until last year, where I didn't play for a few months. Lately I have been playing again and my game crashes a lot for no apparent reason. I don't use ANY mods or plug-ins. I made one change in my PC, which was a slightly newer graphics card (Fx 5500, 256MB, APG) and additional memory (up to 1GB) and the game just crashes pretty regularly. Before I added the new video card, it never happened. I'm using the most current driver set by Nvidia.

Very confused and unhappy, I was having so much fun playing again! if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be most appreciative.

[Tidalpool 0]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body Put your page file up to 3072MB and your max to 4096. With 1GB of memory, you shouldn't be getting this.

How large is your set of plugins (if any). Plugins load into meoory and remain there.

Check to see if you have the most recent version of all your drivers including the ones for your mother board. At one point, I got one for my CPU, and a BIOS flash as well.

How often do you defrag your disk? This program creates large, multiple extent files when saving. The more often you save, the messier it gets. You should defrag at least once a week.

Edit: Have your run the DirectX diagnostic? {run dxdiag}quote>

N_O_Body,

Where excatly is the place to change these settings page file up to 3072MB and your max to

4096.  Thanks 

[Tidalpool 0]

Sorry about those two extra posts, not sure what I did.

 

Extra postings removed.  Understand this is due to response anxiety.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Tidalpool

N_O_Body,

Where excatly is the place to change these settings page file up to 3072MB and your max to

4096.  Thanks quote>

1. Right click on My Computer
2. Choose Properties
3. Select the Advanced Page
4. In the Performance box, click the Settings button
5. Choose the Advanced page
6. In the Virtual Memory box click the Change button
7. On the Virtual Memory page click the Custom size option button
8. Set the boxes for initial size and maximum size
9. Click the Set button
10. Click the OK buttons (3 of them)
11. Restart your machine.

[Tidalpool 0]

Thank you.

[Tidalpool 0]

Another naive question?  When taking files out of the plug -in folders to trouble shoot the only file to be left is :Plug-ins to take it back to original Sim City4 deluxe install.  Then start trouble shooting by re introducing files and playing.  Is the correct ?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Not necessarily.  If you have a large number of plugins, use a binary search technique.  Try this:

1.  Create another folder away from the game, say on your desktop, called PlugHold.
2. Move half the items in your plugins to PlugHold
3. Try the game.
4. If the problem goes away, the troublesome lot is in PlugHold;  If not, you still have it in Plugins.
5. If the problem is still there, move half of the remaining plugins to PlugHold and try again.  Repeat as necessary until the problem goes away.
6. If the problem has disappeared, move half of the stuff in PlugHold back to plugins and try again.
7. If the problem is back, take the last set out of plugins, back to PlugHold, and only put in half of that set, and so on.
8. Tedious, but better than making, say, 1000 tests.

If you do this right, you should make less that 8 tests to locate the offending lot.