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 4)

CapitalShip

on Feb 28, 2007

So, it's not Vista, it's not GalCiv2, it's our beloved, trustworthy nVidia AKA "The Best Vista Experience - In and Out of the Box".

I sure hope, sure truely hope you are right. I my opinion, the best thing it can be is nvidia. The reason I say that, if it is nvidia, it will get fixed. Something tells me alot of this could be incompatibily with vista and if it is, we are all screwed. Not just with GalCiv2, but several and I mean several other games as I am starting to find out. I wish someone with an ATI card and vista can confirm this. Oh, someone mentioned supreme commander working, well it is designed to work in vista, another thing that scares me that it may not be a driver.

PolarBear01

on Mar 01, 2007

when are we gonna be able to play damn I have waited almost 3 weeks now???????? Does anyone know anything? When is nividia gonna fix this s@@@!!!!

mrudis

on Mar 02, 2007

So release 100.65 doesn't fix it? Have to wait for 100.66, is that correct?

kryo

on Mar 02, 2007

Yes, 100.65 is not the one. We're still waitiong on nVidia's next release.

Wally Simmonds

on Mar 03, 2007

Yeah, bit disappoinnted in nvidia...I've put off buying a 8800gts for this very reason.

ShunterAlhena

on Mar 03, 2007

We've got a new beta driver, 101.41. I'm downloading and trying it right away. If it still doesn't work, I'll go bitch and whine on nVidia forums. (No, not really. But I'll be pretty pissed off.)

ShunterAlhena

on Mar 03, 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring thee fine news:
Vista beta driver 101.41 fixes the problem, and GalCiv2 now runs smooth under Vista with a nVidia card

Looks like CariElf's contact spoke the truth!
Therefore, my bitching session on the nVidia forums is hereby postponed!

pdsuber

on Mar 03, 2007

I got the 101.41 beta drivers yesterday (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_101.41.html), and they worked for me. I was able to play a full game last night over several sessions and had no problems.

PolarBear01

on Mar 03, 2007

By the time the fix it galciv 3 will be out and we wont be able to play that ethier......

kryo

on Mar 03, 2007

By the time the fix it galciv 3 will be out and we wont be able to play that ethier......

Might want to read the second page of the thread before getting so pessimistic--two people so far say that 101.41 has the fix

oiseaugrande

on Mar 04, 2007

I can only find 101.41 for 32 bit...anyone know about 64 bit nvidia vista drivers?

oiseaugrande

on Mar 04, 2007

nm, here it is
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_101.41.html

Jarru

on Mar 04, 2007

101.41 beta release seems to work well.

Frogboy

on Mar 04, 2007

Thanks for the response. It is very much appriciated. It is nice to know the message boards are being watched.

However, this is not the first time the message boards have posted that the problem has been fixed internally at NVidia. We have also seen messages stating that the problem will be out with the next driver.

I repeat my earlier comments, there have been several driver updates since the problem was reported including an official, non-beta NVidia release. The game still crashes.

If other games can find a way to work with the NVidia drivers, GC2 should be able to also.

Until this problem is resoved, anyone with Windows Vista and an NVidia card should be wary of purchasing GC2, GC2 Gold, or the Dark Avatar expansion.

I personally, wish the game just worked. The would allow me to stop spending time on the message boards and start spending time playing the game again.

Nothing we can do about it. The game will not work until nVidia updates their driver. The problems are internal to the nVidia driver.

And if you read other game forums, you will find it's not just GalCiv and Sims 2 (hardly obscure games) that have problems with nVidia. I can't play Company of Heroes on my brand new Geforce 7950 on Vista.

The good news is that 101.41 fixes the problem.

Kare Hansen

on Mar 04, 2007

Looks like Nvidia finally have managed to crack it, well sort off.
New beta driver out as off 2 March. Version 101.41

Dark Avatar has finally stopped crashing every 2 min.

URL: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_101.41.html

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