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 8)

106

DrakeWurrum

on May 24, 2007

It also seems to be the case that there is no debug.err file.

Some people have reported this, apparently the installer does not always set the game's folder as writeable on Vista as it should. If you update to the 1.6 beta patch on SDC though, it will write it in My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar instead, which should work fine.

I'd searched my whole computer for it and did not find it. I should also mention that I'm running 1.5, and SDC tells me there are no more updates for it.

107

kryo

on May 24, 2007

Check 'show prerelease versions' in the View menu of SDC then, and if it still doesn't show an update, hit the Refresh XML button in the internet section of SDC's settings.

108

DrakeWurrum

on May 25, 2007

Check 'show prerelease versions' in the View menu of SDC then, and if it still doesn't show an update, hit the Refresh XML button in the internet section of SDC's settings.

I've done that and it still lists v 1.50.127 of GalCiv2 as the current version. I went and set the GalCiv2 folder to writeable though, so maybe next time I'll get a debug.err file.

109

kryo

on May 25, 2007

I've done that and it still lists v 1.50.127 of GalCiv2 as the current version.

That is the latest. The 1.6 beta is for Dark Avatar--click the + next to GC2 and you'll find DA in with the modules there.

If you don't have DA then setting GC2's exe folder as writeable should do the trick.

110

DrakeWurrum

on May 25, 2007

I've done that and it still lists v 1.50.127 of GalCiv2 as the current version.

It apparently hasn't done the trick. I do have DA, but I haven't bothered playing it because I can't even get it to run from the beginning of the galaxy game. At least in GC2, I can play on Gigantic for a couple hours before I explore too much of it and it has en error.
But it does seem I don't have 1.6 of DA, but 1.59[b].096. I'll go ahead and update. Maybe I can get it to make a debug.err in the folder you mentioned.

111

kryo

on May 25, 2007

FYI, the official version number of the latest 1.6 beta is 1.59b.097 (it won't turn over to 1.6 until the final).

112

sylakone

on May 30, 2007

Hi first time for me to post on the forums i have enjoyed the GalcivII both the original and the expansion but at the moment since the last DA Update I get a very annoying graphic glitch witch is really getting to me all of the ships and the stations have weird graphic trails coming out of them from weird angles I have an Nvidia 6800gs Video Card I am running Vista and the 158.18 Nvidia Driver does anyone know how to fix this problem the strange thing is that GC2 does not have this glitch at all that is fine only the expansion has the glitch

thanks in advance

113

CariElf

on May 30, 2007

sylakone, what version does the title screen say Dark Avatar is?

114

sylakone

on May 30, 2007

thanks for the quick reply the version on the title screen is Version 1.6 beta 4

115

CariElf

on May 30, 2007

sylakone,

Ah, we fixed that in 1.6 beta 5.

116

sylakone

on May 30, 2007

thanks i just updated it did not realize another patch had been realeased

117

PhantomPete

on Jun 01, 2007

Will this patch only work for Dark Avatar?

118

CariElf

on Jun 01, 2007

1.6 only updates Dark Avatar. I don't know when/if we will be updating the base GalCiv2.

119

zheader

on Jun 01, 2007

At laptopvideo2go, 101.42 is listed, but when I click on it, no such thread exists. The only 32bit driver above 101.42 that has a thread is v158.42. But I'm unable to download the driver, as when i click on it, it says page not available. Help?

120

kryo

on Jun 04, 2007

If their download is broken, I'd advise posting about it on their forums, or requesting help with modding the .inf yourself to force the standard nvidia package onto your system.

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