I've been a PC-guru (somewhat), and got this problem:
On my flashy (at the time) Athlon XP 3200+ with a Gigabyte nForce 2 Ultra (MCP-T), 512 MB of original Winbond PC-3200 RAM (BH-5 chips!!!), Sapphire Radeon 9200 Atlantis (128MB of DDR), and latest-and-greatest Windows XP SP2 with DirectX 9.0c - I could not install SimCity 4 well.
I installed it fine, configured it - then, while playing, it will suddenly restart the computer. No virus, no Sasser, and updated anti-virus solutions (tried several with the game). A fresh installation of Windows did not help, and I tried that 3 times. My discs appear to be fine (a bit scratched - but that doesn't affect it), and they are original and a certified copy I purchased myself from a store here.
On my mum's PC (Pentium III 733MHz, 256MB of PC-133 SDRAM and a cheap VIA GPU on Windows XP SP1) - it worked fabulously.
Why not on mine?! I even have a much more powerful PSU! This is simply driving me crazy! Maxis is so great, but not with my PC. I'm sick or restarting every 5 minutes!
JH
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
Make sure you've turned off WinXP's lovely feature of rebooting instead of showing you the blue screen. The message there could help narrow down the culprit. Gut feeling would be video drivers.
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
Go to the Control Panel, then System to bring up System Properties. On the Advanced tab, click on Startup and Recovery's Settings button. Checkbox there for Automatically Restart.
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
My drivers I update monthly...
Unchecked that damn restart button. I keep forgetting just how many evil secrets Microsoft "treasures" deep inside the system.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
SimCity 4 would be a lot more addictive if it didn't take ten times as long as it should to do anything.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
LagCity 4 more like it. When you get a nice sized city you have to turn down the graphics to move. I tried really hard to enjoy that game but it was just too slow =(
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
Same here. Give me SimCity 2000 any day.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
cough*about 2 years ago*cough When I installed Simcity 4 I did notice a strange problem, though it doesn't sound related to yours. I tried installing Simcity 4 from the DVD drive in my computer, but it mysteriously froze partway through the installation. I merely put the disc in the CD-RW drive and it worked fine. Strange problem, but whatever, as long as I get to play.
I second the driver comments, and it's unusual, but if the most recent version of the drivers don't work, you might try rolling them back to a previous version.
Good luck!
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
That's why I'm always a tad reluctant when updating drivers.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)