01-11-2001 20:19									#1
	Solution: XP Problem Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

We're looking at creating formal step by step directions for the technical support site, but for those who are experiencing weird behavior on XP:

* Make sure you download the windows update patches from microsoft for XP. At least one of the fixes relate to Windows 98/me compatability.

* There is something called a Compatability Wizard that can be found under accessories on the start menu. One of the settings is Windows 98/ME.

We've seen a combination of these fix a number of issues on XP including font issues and black screens.

Jeff

	01-11-2001 21:38									#2
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Jeff,

Are you aware of the problem pertaining to *extreme* slowdown in the game, including most notably the horrendous scroll times, associated with Nvidia Detonator drivers?

I've only tested v21.83 through v22.50, but the problem is consistent across the board. Here's my system configuration:

Hardware:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
MSI KT7266 Pro Mainboard
512MB DDR-RAM
2 30GB 7200 RPM Maxtor Hard Drives
MSI Starforce 822 Geforce 3, 64MB
Creative Labs Audigy Soundcard (OEM)
3COM 3C905C-TX 10/100 Ethernet
Microsoft Natural Kybd, Intellimouse Optical USB

OS:
Windows XP Professional OEM, fully patched (there were 9 updates available for my config, all have been installed via Windows Update).

Notes:
- Civ3 is installed (full install) in the default directory on drive C:

The problem manifests itself as:

(1) Slow, jerky scrolling. When moving the mouse to the screen edges, scrolling occurs, but with 2-3 second pauses between. It is bad enough to make the game totally unplayable.

(2) Slow, jerky unit placement lines. Selecting a unit and moving the mouse around is slow and stutters, making unit placement difficult and annoying.

Solution:
Downgrading to the default Windows XP Professional drivers fixed the problem. I'm told these are version 12.40. In any case, the game runs smooth and fast on my machine with the default XP Nvidia Geforce 3 drivers.

Just to be certain, I formatted my hard drive and did a totally clean install of XP last night. The first application I loaded was Civ3. Running with the default Nvidia drivers, and everything worked fine. I then installed Detonator drivers v22.50, and the problem as described above returned.

I'm currently running okay on the default (12.40) drivers that shipped with XP, but as someone noted elsewhere, the performance gains lost in other *3D* applications are *enormous*.

I'll be happy to send you any information I can to aid in tracking this one down.

Thanks,
Matt Peckham
Writer, Computer Games Magazine / Online
402-598-0325 (h)
402-280-7602 (w)

	01-11-2001 22:32									#3
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I can second this - GeForce3, WinXP (fully patched), newest Detonator = such an extreme lag moving the screen around that the game really can't be played. Downgrading the driver to the "certified" driver that comes with XP fixes the problem.

	02-11-2001 02:09									#4
	Tired of ads?

I could have sworn either arstechnica.com or tomshardware.com had details on this same problem with the Detonator drivers for the Geforce3 on one of the benchmarks it ran. Couldn't find it though. But they said the same thing, once they went back to an older driver it worked fine. So I have my doubts its a CivIII thing.

Just another reason not to upgrade drivers unless you have a problem, lol.

	02-11-2001 04:11									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Could someone take a look into the "title screen only" problem? I believe some of us are getting quite frustrated.....

	02-11-2001 16:12									#6
	Increase the size of your Attachments

For some reason, I am having no problem whatsoever with these things, yet I have an XP with the most up to date Detonator drivers

My system is:

Athlon 700 (original type)
GeForce (1) DDR
384Mb RAM (SDRAM)
Windows XP Professional

	04-11-2001 00:42									#7
	WinXP Pro doing fine Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I'm doing fine as well; maybe the problem only occurs with WinXP Home edition?

My system is a Dell Dimension 8100, P4 1.3g 256M ram, Nvidia Gforce grafix, soundblaster live! card.

	04-11-2001 01:43									#8
	Got spare money?

I have WinXP Pro and it happened to me.

You guys probably didn't have the most recent (20.88 or something). They're called Detonator XP's, they're about a month old for download from Nvidia's site.

The ones that come with Windows don't have the problem (they're 12.40 or something)

	04-11-2001 02:11									#9
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I have a Dell Inspiron computer, and when I try to run the game nothing happens. It just sits there. When I go to the processes screen it says it is running as a process, but it won't run. I have WondowsXP Pro version. Any ideas anybody? Oh, by the way, my computer is a laptop

	04-11-2001 20:31									#10
	crash in XP Increase the size of your Attachments

I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but when I run Civ3 on my XP system, it doesn't even seem to get to the CD check. The task manager shows the process, plus an "~eftmp**" process that's running, both of which quit without displaying the Civ3 splash screen (the one shown before the movie) or whirring the CD drive. HOWEVER, if I run it as Administrator, it works fine. I then quit, and run it as just my normal user account, and from then on it works fine until the next rebbot. Anyone else seen this?

I've got an Athlon 1.4, Epox 8KTA3Pro (KT133A chipset) motherboard with 2 HDs and a CD-ROM plus a DVD-ROM. I've got NTFS on the boot/game partition and installing as admin vs normal user makes no difference. Using SBLive Value with Creative drivers and Geforce 2 GTS with 21.83/85 drivers.

	04-11-2001 22:09									#11
	Support Apolyton

ranger: I'm not sure if that is what it is or not, but I will be sure and check to see if that is what it is. Thanks a lot, and I'll let you know if it works out!

	05-11-2001 03:58									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I've also got the scrolling problem over here.
I'm running win XP pro. My detonator drivers are version 21.81, using a hercules 3d prophet II MX. I really hope for a quick solution for this problem...

	05-11-2001 05:15									#13
	Remove this text

A temporary solution has already been posted...

	17-11-2001 04:40									#14
	W2000 has extremely slow scrolling no matter what graphics card Enter the AD-FREE zone

I use Win2000 and I've got an ASUS 8200/T2 GeForce3 TI card. it's soo slow it is completely impossible to play the game at all.

Is scrolls but with several seconds between each screen. Tested with another graphics card and it is a bit faster like half a second to a second per screen.... Wow!

And I have a PC that churns out over 100fps in a first person shooter with 3D graphics!!!!! Then I load up this game that has no special graphics at all, just very plain 2D and shouldn't be demanding at all for a PC with an Athlon XP 1600 and 1Gb RAM and it runs slower than a 386!!!!

This is NOT a driver problem since all other games work just fine. If other companies can make games that work why can't firaxis do it????

I am certainly not going to fiddle with old drivers and mess up my system because firaxis refuses to fix something that is so obviously broken. The suggestion that people should install an old bad performing driver is totally ridiculous.

The problem is not confined to the graphics card or the driver it runs slow as hell on any windows2000 platform(XP is built on the win2000 core). The only platform that seems to deliver acceptable performance with this game is windows 98, an operating system that no sane person wants on his computer.

It pisses me off especially since I bought a new machine in order to enjoy this game to it's fullest.... It was bloody slow on my PII 300Mhz with Win2000 as well, but I thought that with some more hardware muscle it should be fixed..... Not so, it runs EVEN SLOWER on my new machine. It's completely impossible to play the game as it is.

Fix it Firaxis, right NOW!!!

	17-11-2001 09:45									#15
	Re: W2000 has extremely slow scrolling no matter what graphics card Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by jonasf I use Win2000 and I've got an ASUS 8200/T2 GeForce3 TI card. it's soo slow it is completely impossible to play the game at all. Is scrolls but with several seconds between each screen. Tested with another graphics card and it is a bit faster like half a second to a second per screen.... Wow! And I have a PC that churns out over 100fps in a first person shooter with 3D graphics!!!!! Then I load up this game that has no special graphics at all, just very plain 2D and shouldn't be demanding at all for a PC with an Athlon XP 1600 and 1Gb RAM and it runs slower than a 386!!!! This is NOT a driver problem since all other games work just fine. If other companies can make games that work why can't firaxis do it???? I am certainly not going to fiddle with old drivers and mess up my system because firaxis refuses to fix something that is so obviously broken. The suggestion that people should install an old bad performing driver is totally ridiculous. The problem is not confined to the graphics card or the driver it runs slow as hell on any windows2000 platform(XP is built on the win2000 core). The only platform that seems to deliver acceptable performance with this game is windows 98, an operating system that no sane person wants on his computer. It pisses me off especially since I bought a new machine in order to enjoy this game to it's fullest.... It was bloody slow on my PII 300Mhz with Win2000 as well, but I thought that with some more hardware muscle it should be fixed..... Not so, it runs EVEN SLOWER on my new machine. It's completely impossible to play the game as it is. Fix it Firaxis, right NOW!!!

Agreed! I have a top of the line system as well & I am not about to downgrade to those crappy 12.40's when I play alot of FPS and other 3D games. Firaxis has a resposibility to fix such a huge glitch & fix it fast!

	17-11-2001 16:15									#16
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

How about with Voodoo 3 3000, does it help to uninstall the new drivers?

I haven't tried it yet, I'd like to hear from others if it helps or not first.

	22-11-2001 16:15									#17
	Fix to the NVidia slowness problem Got spare money?

Here's how you fix this problem.

1. Go to http://www.guru3d.com/files and click on Videocard Drivers, then NVIDIA detonator drivers. You'll be presented with a list of drivers.

2. Grab the Detonator 12.41 WHQL drivers that are appropriate for your platform. The drivers are in the form of an executable, but at least for Win2K you can open it up in your zip file handler program (I use Powerarchiver myself, but most people use Winzip).

3. Extract the nvoglnt.dll file into the directory that Civ3 is installed (i.e., the directory that the game executable resides in). This works under Win2K, as executables seem to pick up DLLs first in the home directory of the executable, then the system directories. This might not work everywhere. If it doesn't have an effect, then you'll have to place it in your system32 directory or system directory (wherever your current nvoglnt.dll file resides).

This procedure worked for me. Give it a shot...can't hurt...

	22-11-2001 22:22									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

kcbrown,

Thanks a lot for the fix! It works great in Win XP.

	23-11-2001 04:22									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Superb stuff - this is the solution. Now I can have the latest Nvidia drivers on my system for all my 3D games and still play Civ III.

Thanks very much for sharing this with everyone!

	29-11-2001 11:12									#20
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Yep, putting that dll file in the civ3 directory has fixed everything for me. Good-o, thanks for the help guys

	29-11-2001 15:20									#21
	Get a bigger avatar today!

I can play the game fine up until I get gunpowder a few turns after which if I go into a city screen everyhting just freezes and Im forced to use trusty old Ctrl-Alt-Del most annoying especially since I was in the middle of a major continental war!

Any help is much appreciated.

	10-12-2001 05:21									#22
	win xp Support Apolyton

i have a problem . recently i uploaded the new nvidia drivers
for xp (that's what i'm running) of course the civ3 won't even wanted to run along with my other programs...
well i started to unload the drivers
unfortunatly my downsizing got out of hand i deleted files in civ3 directory
i'm pissed because quite a few hours of play are gone
however i can not reinstall the game. because first it tries to uninstall the game.... the files are not there so it copies civ3.exe to windows directory and nothing happens....
what should i do to install civ3 again?
i ac cont uninstall civ3 from control panel or use a uninstall from cd...
norton utilities is fixing the registry but they coming back

	10-12-2001 05:31									#23
	win xp reinstall Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

my little brother (15) when exerimenting with a new account in win xp deleted my civ3 files (in a directory) now the game wont work (no files) however the reinstall procces is not working because the uninstall program is trying to find civ3 folder (not there
i removed it manually (start shorcut along with registry ) using norton utitities 2002 but it won't install.
what i'm missing?? i want my game back!!!!

	10-12-2001 08:13									#24
	Problem with the updated patch... Increase the size of your Attachments

I'm having a problem after downloading the patch.

After downloading the first patch, the game wouldn't work, so I reinstalled the game...no problem.

I downloaded the second patch, and it doesn't work. But now I can't reinstall or uninstall the game, so I'm stuck with a game that I can't play. At least until a fix is produced.

I'm running...

Windows XP Home
1.4 Ghz Athlon
512 MB RAM
40 GB drive

If anyone has had a similar problem and solved it, please let me know...I'm in the process of teaching the Russkis a lesson.