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GalCiv2/Dark Avatar on Vista

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GalCiv2/Dark Avatar on Vista

from GalCiv2 Forums

Update August 2007: If you are having memory issues on Vista, please read this Microsoft knowledgebase article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

Update: June 2007: Version 1.6 of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar should have no problems at all on Vista at this point as long as your NVidia video card drivers are version 158.24 or higher.

If you have a laptop card, check the support section of your laptop manufacturer's website (Dell, hp, etc) for updated drivers.  If the driver version is not 158.24 or higher, you should contact your laptop manufacturer and ask them when updated drivers will be available. The more of you who contact them, the more incentive they have to update their drivers.  Otherwise, your only other option is to use the modified drivers from a third party site like LaptopVideo2Go, but this may void your laptop warranty so check the terms and conditions of your warranty first.

Update Mar 3 07: The 101.41 beta drivers appear to contain the fix for the issues discussed in this thread. If you are using an nVidia card with Vista, check nVidia's site for these drivers (or newer).

If you have a laptop and the manufacturer does not provide new enough drivers, try the ones here.

Update May 7 07: Version 1.6 beta 2 for Dark Avatar resolves the scrolling slowdown issue.

There is a known issue with GalCiv2 and Dark Avatar on Windows Vista and an NVidia video card. With the older version of the drivers, this could manifest as a crash or hang, or sometimes a hard lock. With the latest drivers for Vista, the game just stops repainting but can be shut down by hitting ALT+F4. It is typical of this error to see the message "Error flipping back buffer" in your debug.err file.

We are working with NVidia to resolve this issue. It may help if we send in the system information for additional systems, so if you encounter this error, please send your debug.err file to [email protected] with the subject line "Vista NVidia error" or something along those lines so that I can quickly identify them and send them to my contact at NVidia. Dark Avatar and GalCiv2 have their own debug.err files, so make sure that you send the one where you got the error. Please only send in the report once.

You may also want to save your last autosave before the error so that you can test to make sure that new drivers have fixed the problem once NVidia has releases a new version, but you don't need to send in the save games at this time.

Currently, there are no known issues with ATI cards on Vista, but you may want to make sure that you have the lastest drivers anyway.

Please make sure that your debug.err file is included with any reports you send in, as SmartException is not currently attaching the debug.err file in its reports for Dark Avatar.

Update: NVidia has identified a problem in their drivers, which will be fixed in their next release.

176,478 views 231 replies
Reply #76 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The basic stock drivers aren't generally compatible with onboard video such as you'd find in a laptop, unfortunately. Until nVidia releases a Mobility version of 101.XX, I'm not sure if there's any way you can update to resolve this issue.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #78 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ive installed the 101.41 drivers and it still doesn't work, crashes and screen goes wonky, i can play for between 10-30mins at a time then the screen starts going weird, transparencies dont work etc and a bit later it will crash so that the screen will no longer update. My computer is a Dell D620, with the Nvidia Qaudro 110NVM.

Reply #79 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Klasla, can you please send in your debug.err to [email protected]? Please make sure that you describe the problem and note that you installed the 104.41 drivers so that I don't just send you a canned reply.
Reply #80 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
[Cari beat me to it]
Reply #81 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a Dell Inspiron laptop with a Geforce 7900. The latest beta driver from nvidia wouldn't work for me either. The install program told me the same thing that my hardware wasn't compatible. I went to the site laptoptogo video.com and downloaded the same driver but they have modified it to work on laptops (basically they just add the laptops name to a list in the driver file). I installed the driver and amazingly the game worked. I had the same problem with it working for 10 to 15 minutes and then freezing. Last night I played it for over 3 hours and so far it is still fine. The site is very useful and even includes step by step install guides for whatever OS you're running. Try this and it should help.
Reply #82 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Good work, the GC2 manual did say something about GC2 not been compatible with the latest versions.
Reply #84 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Scrolling/rotating is still slow, it has improved a bit, but it's still a lot slower then without the minimap.
Reply #85 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Setekh, are you using the 158.18 drivers?

Reply #87 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
yo, I'm on a dell laptop using a nvidia GPU (nvidia GeForce Go 7300) and I'm having a hard time finding a compatible update. Could someone point me in the right direction?
Reply #88 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm on a dell laptop using a nvidia GPU (nvidia GeForce Go 7300) and I'm having a hard time finding a compatible update.


You can find modded versions of the standard drivers that will work on Go chipsets at laptopvideo2go.com.
Reply #89 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just like to say thanks a million for the latest patch! It has cleared up the Vista rotate/pan slowdown!

Thanks!
Reply #90 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm on a dell laptop using a nvidia GPU (nvidia GeForce Go 7300) and I'm having a hard time finding a compatible update.


You can find modded versions of the standard drivers that will work on Go chipsets at laptopvideo2go.com.


I am also using the same GeForce Go 7300 (128M) .. My driver version is 7.15.0010.9735 dated 11/22/2006 .. What will be the latest driver for it ?? Thanks in advance..
Reply #91 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Well, for the 158.18 drivers, the file version is:

7.15.0011.5818

 

Reply #92 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a Nvidea 7300 LE driver showing is 7.15.10.9746 Will it work?I just bought and I am downloading the game now....If it doesnt can I get money back? Or do new drivers work now?
Reply #93 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a Nvidea 7300 LE driver showing is 7.15.10.9746 Will it work?I just bought and I am downloading the game now....If it doesnt can I get money back? Or do new drivers work now?


Just update your drivers. If your machine is a laptop, you can get them at laptopvideo2go.com, otherwise, you can use the standard ones at nvidia.com.
Reply #94 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
its a dell desktop with Vista Home premium 32bit.Also my Downlaod of Dark Avatar failed.I will update drivers for Nvidea when game is downloaded.....
Reply #95 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've been having issues where the game locks up for no reason at all, like described in this thread. I run Vista with an Intel Core Duo, and have an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS. I've got the right drivers for everything to work...I can even run Supreme Commander just fine, no errors. It may get choppy on max settings, but it's a game that demands much power from a machine.

There are only two games that my computer has issues with. One is GalCiv 2, and the other is City of Heroes. This computer won't even run CoH. At all.
I went to laptopvideo2go.com and none of the drivers they had would work for this laptop, not any later than the one I have right now anyways. I remember using some other site to get my driver, but I just Googled for it. I believe I am using 101.41, as no other Vista driver for NVIDIA cards has been able to find compatible hardware for the driver I'm trying to install.

I've so far found I can at least play through a Medium-sized galaxy with only minimal problems, (I can usually alt+tab out and back in and it'll be back to normal) but if I try anything larger it will lock up when too much is going on at once. I also can't play through the Campaign without the game locking up.

I suggest the coders of GalCiv 2 look into fixing their memory leaks, at the very least, though I doubt that is the problem.
Reply #96 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

The bug is in the drivers.  This has been verified both by NVidia and several users here. Currently, those of you with laptop cards are at the mercy of your laptop manufacturer to get you the new drivers (and thus far none of them seem to have the correct drivers) or laptopvideo2go, who doesn't have the new drivers modified yet.

You have been lucky that only 2 of your games don't work on Vista.  I can't tell you what the bug was because that would violate our NDA with NVidia, but it was in their drivers.

Reply #97 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
New drivers installed (which was carnage!) and we will see what happens...After driver reboot i looked to reget the Dark Avatar expansion but when it is runinng the gc2_DarkAvatar.sdc it just sticks on 100% complete and then doesnt do anything else.....

Reply #98 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Well, for the 158.18 drivers, the file version is:


7.15.0011.5818


 



Thanks.. I can find this driver on the nVidia website.. However, it doesn't say that it supports GeForce Go 7300 .. ONLY GeForce 7300 GS,GT,LE and SE .. Laptopvideo2go doesn't have this driver at all .. The latest driver that I could find that 'supports' GeForce Go 7300 is 98.02 ..
Reply #99 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks.. I can find this driver on the nVidia website.. However, it doesn't say that it supports GeForce Go 7300 .. ONLY GeForce 7300 GS,GT,LE and SE .. Laptopvideo2go doesn't have this driver at all .. The latest driver that I could find that 'supports' GeForce Go 7300 is 98.02 ..


The drivers on laptopvideo2go are modified to work with all common nvidia laptop chipsets, so you shouldn't need to look for one that explicitly says it supports it. The 158.18 driver on this page does include support for the 7300 Go.
Reply #100 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
when it is runinng the gc2_DarkAvatar.sdc it just sticks on 100% complete and then doesnt do anything else


If you are running an antivirus or firewall program it may interfere with SDC, so you could try temporarily disabling them. If that doesn't let it finish, please contact [email protected].