The Looking Glass

Running SC4 Launcher with the "Software rendering" option checked eliminates the graphics problem. For now I'm going to mark this as fixed. Thank you all for your comments.

I'm having this problem as well, on my new laptop with Windows 8.1 on it. So I should search for an older driver?

Nothing shows up in processes when I attempt to run the game. I did as you posted, however it still won't start. And it says that it failed to update Graphics Rules.sgr because it could not be found, even though it's right there in the Maxis folder with the rest of the files that updated/patched successfully. I'm relying on SC4 Launcher to start the game now. So my problem now is the graphics glitch, everything is jacked-up-looking when I play a city or region. I didn't have this problem on Windows 7. I've had the SC4 Deluxe disc for years, so I don't really see the point in purchasing online.

The game installed in the Downloads folder. Clicking the SimCity4.exe file doesn't do anything either. I've found a solution for now - I downloaded and installed the SC4 Launcher, found in the STEX and it works perfectly. I played SC4 just earlier, but there is still the graphical glitch so I will need to find out how to fix that.

Hello. I have recently installed SimCity 4 Deluxe on my new Asus laptop (came with Windows 8.1 pre-installed), but it won't start. I was actually having trouble just trying to start the installation a few days ago, as nothing would happen when I inserted Disc 1. The PC would recognize it and it would show up in the drive folder, but clicking it resulted in nothing - setup, autoplay, nothing worked. Run as administrator and compatibility modes did nothing either. I simply restarted the computer later, and then it worked and began installing immediately. I had no problems after that, inserted Disc 2 when needed, and it finished installing and the game even started on its own. But now, when I insert Disc 2 and try to run the game - nothing happens, again. The PC recognizes the disc and knows it's there, but autoplay won't work, run as administrator won't work, compatibility mode doesn't work, and the rungame.exe file does absolutely nothing. After attempting to start the game, I checked the Task Manager to see what processes it showed - nothing related to SimCity 4 shows up at all. So I restarted the computer several times, since that worked with the installation, but it doesn't do anything this time. Occasionally, when I try to start the game using compatibility mode, this message instantly pops up: Troubleshooting does nothing. I've searched all over online for solutions, but none have worked. This game started up a few days ago immediately following the installation (although there was some odd graphics glitch, but looking around I see this problem is common when running SC4 on newer computers and is fixable), so I know it is capable of running on this computer. What should I do?