GalCiv2/Dark Avatar on Vista

Published on February 1, 2007 By CariElf In Bug Reports

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 gc2bugs@stardock.com 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.

Comments (Page 16)

226

Armandeus

on Nov 23, 2008

kryo

reply 22

If that's not it, since the log ends with a video error, you might try rolling back to a 17x.x driver, rather than the new 180s.

I am very reluctant to roll back drivers like that, because it will adversely affect every other game on my system. When will you be updating GC2 to be compatible with the WHQL 180.48 Nvidia drivers?

227

Jimmythegoat

on Jan 12, 2009

Hey, I'm trying to play GCII on my HP laptop with a 6150 GO card. I've had the same problem as everyone else who's been posting here about the buffer problem. I've been reading through the thread and see advice to go to the laptopvideo2go site. However, I am rather hesitant to update my driver with one of the 180 series because they have a lot of complaints. Does anyone have a recommendation of the most reliable driver to use? Thanks.

228

tawilson

on Jan 18, 2009

This thread was started in relation to Dark Avatar, but I'm having the same problem with Twilight.

It seems that I have this problem also. I'm playing Twilight and it usually runs great for an hour or so, and then suddenly crashes. My Debug.err file has the "flipping back" message...

Here are my video details cut from the debug file:

Display Info
Display device 1:
Device Name: \\.\DISPLAY1
Card Name: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip Type: GeForce 8600M GT
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Key Device: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0407&SUBSYS_01F21028&REV_A1
Display Memory: 1776 MB
Current Display Mode: 1920 x 1200 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Max Resolution:
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.5669
Driver Date: 10/4/2007 21:24:00
DirectX Acceleration Enabled: Yes

...and here is the error...

Debug Message: Updating ZOC.
Debug Message: Updating ZOC.
Debug Message: Error flipping back buffer to primary buffer.
Debug Message: D3DERR_DEVICELOST
Debug Message: Device lost
Debug Message: Attempting to reset device.
Debug Message: Device Validated. Attempting to restore resources.

I updated my video driver, although this version seems to be different than the one you guys were talking about. It says its current though.

229

kryo

on Jan 19, 2009

Does anyone have a recommendation of the most reliable driver to use? Thanks.

They should still have the 170 series available there if you'd rather try them first.

I updated my video driver, although this version seems to be different than the one you guys were talking about. It says its current though.

The one you got (assumably from your OEM) is still very old, and the 84/86 series cards tended to have this issue in later drivers even after it was fixed for the rest. Head over to laptopvideo2go.com as noted above and try a more recent driver.

230

Shichiaikan

on Oct 04, 2009

Ok... so I'm running Vista 64, GTX260... game flat crashes as soon as I try to go passed the opening movie. I'm sure this is, at the least, related to others' problems, but I haven't seen any kind of fix. Anyone find a good fix and can point me in the right direction?

231

kryo

on Oct 04, 2009

Please start a new thread and post your debug.err file's contents there--unless you've freshly installed vista and haven't updated the drivers, it's not the same as this issue. Your debug will help give some idea of what your particular issue might be.

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