Computer restarts after entering mayor mode

[nsltrcw 0]

I recently reinstalled SimCity Deluxe Edition on a computer that used to run it just fine.  No hardware has changed, except that I've doubled my RAM to 1gb.  Here's the system specs:

Intel Pentium 4, something like 2.5 ghz

1 gb ram

Nvidia GeForce MX 4000 (128 mb video ram) with latest drivers

Big hardrive, with 1 gb pagefile alloted

WinXP Pro, SP2, fully updated

DirectX 9c

So here's the skinny.  The game loads just fine and region view is normal.  I can load city squares normally.  As long as they're in unincorporated (I'm in God-mode), everything is smooth.  Once I incorporate the city, though, my computer restarts itself almost immediately.  Zooming in seems to accelerate the crash (without zooming, I once had it run almost 30 sec before crashing).  On restart the error message sent to Microsoft indicates some kind of driver error.

I've tried several suggestions posted in different threads that seemed like they might be relevant, but so far no luck.  I tried switching to software rendering so the video card wouldn't be an issue (I understand that SC4 is finicky about that), but no luck.

I apologize if there is a fix posted somewhere obvious.  I've done my best to look thoroughly through the forum threads for a solution, but none has presented itself thus far.

Thanks in advance for any help!  I'll check in tomorrow, so please don't be offended if I don't reply sooner.

Regards

[tchaos713 5]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there is some kind of driver conflict.  Try updating your sound card drivers (and maybe your chipset drivers as well).  Also, with 1GB of RAM, your pagefile should be set to Min 3072MB and Max 4096MB (or both values at 4096MB to avoid fragmentation issues).

If you could, please post a screen shot of the driver error.  Also, please let us know of any mods you may be using (lots and bats shouldn't be pertinant simply because none have been built however, things like mayor mode trees, terrain mods, etc are).

[nsltrcw 0]

Thanks. I'll try increasing the pagefile when I get home, probably after a (likely) much needed defrag. I'll also try re-installing just in case that happened to be the issue. Will let you know the result.

P.S. Why should the page file be ~4x RAM?

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Originally posted by: nsltrcw

 Why should the page file be ~4x RAM?quote>

XP needs a lot of paging space.  If you look at what's running in the task manager under Processes, you will see a lot of stuff.  All of that is either in memory or on the paging file.

SC4 has a memory load of around 300MB without much by way of plugins, and a small city.  This gets bigger.  If you don't have enough paging space you risk a memory refusal, whereupon the game crashes with an excuse of "ACCESS VIOLATION".

The absolute maximum paging file for XP is 4095MB.  User processes can have 2048MB and the O/S gets 2MB.  If you are running a server, the user spaces gets to be 4096MB so that the managed memory becomes 6GB.

If Microshaft could write a decent operating system instead of worrying about special deals for their own applications, we would get a much better paging system.