[unSOLVED!] SimCity 4 Crashing on boot.

[Guus Ketelings]

Hi there,
I have been experiencing crashes when I boot SC4. As soon as the intro is done playing, and the game has loaded (before going into the region), it blackscreens and dies. I have got my hands on Jeronij's tutorial to prevent/fix it, and as of now, my plugins-folders are empty. Even now the game is not booting though. I have a crashlog however, I'll put it down below.
I can zip the SimCity-folder if I need to so people can have a look as to what might be generating the exception. To the people trying to help - I love you <3

[mgb204]

Sorry to tell you, but the crash log is really of no help to diagnose the problem.

Note: If you are using the disk-based version of SC4, that will NOT work under Windows 10. In addition, under Windows Vista, 7 or 8/8.1, MS released a Windows update that will also cause the game to fail to launch... further details here.

If that doesn't apply to you, and you can't get past the region screen without a CTD, that suggests a compatibility problem between your Graphics hardware/drivers, your OS and SC4. To verify this, simply set the game to run with software rendering, which takes the GPU out of the equation, since that offloads the GPU's tasks onto the CPU instead.

Right click your SC4 shortcut, select properties and add the following at the end of the "Target" line:

-d:software

Now test and see if all is working... if it is though, know that software rendering is only meant as a last resort for when all else fails. Ideally, you want to try and make the DirectX renderer work, which often you can, with a little bit of work. If you don't mind, I'll link at this point to the exact same issue a user was having on Simtropolis today... since I don't fancy typing this all out again.

p.s. - on ST I go by RSC204 instead.

[Guus Ketelings]

You, sir, are a legend. Thank you very much for your response - my game is working again. Thousand times thank you!

[Guus Ketelings]

Hi there,
I have been experiencing crashes when I boot SC4. As soon as the intro is done playing, and the game has loaded (before going into the region), it blackscreens and dies. I have got my hands on Jeronij's tutorial to prevent/fix it, and as of now, my plugins-folders are empty. Even now the game is not booting though. I have a crashlog however, I'll put it down below.
I can zip the SimCity-folder if I need to so people can have a look as to what might be generating the exception. To the people trying to help - I love you <3

Well, trouble doesn't end there. It worked one time, and as soon as I saved the game crashed and decided to CTD on startup again. I have tried many solutions, wiping all game-data through Steam, even completely re-installing the game. It worked (my cities are buggered and mush right now, but hey ho) though, when I saved again it crashed. I have reached out to more people but they are quite lost with this problem. If anyone needs to see my folders and subfolders, I have no problem with sharing them. I really hope someone is able to help me with this seeing as it is my favorite game :/

Kind regards,
Guus Ketelings

[mgb204]

If you could answer a few questions, it might help to get to the bottom of what's going on here:

What version of Windows are you using?

What version of SC4 do you have (disk or digital edition, if the latter, from which source)?

How is Windows/your computer running generally? Are you having problems elsewhere? Do you play other games? Is your computer running slowly?

Lastly, find the configuration log for SC4, located usually in Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps - The file "YOURCOMPUTERNAME-config-log.txt" is what you are looking for. If you could copy/paste until the end of the "Numbers" section, again that might help to see the problem.

[Guus Ketelings]

I have to address something though. I am using Steam, I let my games install in my D:// partition of my PC (it's got 2 Internal HardDrives instead of 1 bigger IHD), though my plugins folder is located in the "Documents" folder, in C://. I don't know if this affects gameplay/CTD's too.


What version of Windows are you using? Windows 7 Home Premium (SP1)(

What version of SC4 do you have (disk or digital edition, if the latter, from which source)? Digital, Steam

How is Windows/your computer running generally? Are you having problems elsewhere? Do you play other games? Is your computer running slowly? I play other games, PC runs meh-ish usually. Best example I can use is Minecraft (seeing as it tends to eat RAM), it runs fine when I set the priority to high. Same for SimCity 4, it's playable for sure but could be a bit better. FYI, it's an Acer Aspire X3900, 3GB RAM, Intel Core i3 @2.93kHz, Intel Graphics.

Also, here you go:                                           (full cfg. here: http://pastebin.com/p2tkv5CL)
cpuSpeed = 2926
memory = 1024
freeMemory = 1024
screenWidth = 1920
screenHeight = 1080
screenBPP = 32
videoMemory = 64
textureMemory = 64
textureStages = 1
bogoFPS = 0
bogoMPPS = 0

[mgb204]

Well being an older game, you don't need really high specs to run SC4. The big problem that requires software rendering is due to the integrated Intel graphics. actually, there is nothing wrong with them on modern Core i systems, despite what many will tell you. But specifically in relation to SC4, the drivers don't do a good job with older DirectX games. Based on my experience, don't bother trying to run in hardware rendering, it won't work. Note the following lines:

videoMemory = 64
textureMemory = 64

This is really low. In reality you will have more memory than that. Chances are due to changes in Windows, SC4 can't detect it. However, with software rendering, this shouldn't be an issue, so let's skip past that...

So if SC4 is still crashing, that doesn't leave many suspects. To start off, you should add the following to the target line of the shortcut:

-d:software -audio:off -intro:off -CPUCount:1 -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32"

-d:software
So that will force software rendering (as before).

-audio:off
Disables audio, which can cause big problems on newer systems with Realtek audio.

-intro:off
Remove the intro, probably not the issue, but worthwhile.

-CPUCount:1
Sets the game to only use one core of your CPU. This one is important, SC4 is not multi-core enabled and failing to do this usually causes CTDs. But, normally they only happen when playing (zooming in/out is most common).

-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32
Lastly is setting a custom resolution for the game to use. Ideally you should set the parts in orange to your desktop resolution, but bear in mind, not all are supported. If you get problems, try a standard resolution like 1024x768, but some trial and error can help to optimise this for your system.

Let us know how that works out for you.

[Guus Ketelings]

Already had most tags in there, except -audio:off. Anyways, I am still getting a CTD when booting the game D:
Seeing as you were already narrowing it down, what's the next plan of action? Thank you so much in advance though, you've been an amazing help so far haha!

[mgb204]

Well, actually we've exhausted a lot of the potential problems I can think of.

At this point any problem moves away from fixes in SC4 to fixes with your computer/Windows/drivers.

What bugs me is that it worked briefly when first switching to software rendering, but then crashed later and hasn't worked since. I think at this stage I'd uninstall/re-install SC4 and see if that helps, because something may have corrupted.

After that, I'd look towards your hard drive, because there is a chance something is wrong with it. Open device manager, find under "Disk Drives" your brand of hard disk. Usually that will be either WDC (Western Digital), Seagate, Toshiba or Hitachi (few others exist anymore). Go to whichever you have's website and look for a diagnostic tool application. Run this to check if your drive is functioning correctly then report the results here.

[bombardiere]

audio:off may just be the key. Do you have any audio devices plugged in?

Because what you describe in the first post resemble a lot like difficulties I had few weeks ago with a brand new computer. The SC4 crashed on the intro screen, or if I took it off, right after the region screen was loaded. I was very baffled, but I read multitude of posts and I realise that SC4 requires an audio device to function. After I plugged an earphone, the SC4 worked perfectly.

Although you wrote that your crash happen after the intro was played, so this may not apply to you. Still I suggest that try that audio:off option.

[Guus Ketelings]

Thing is, I already have that function in the start-up sequence :/ I can try plug in an audiodevice to see if it works. I am using a combined headset, so basically I have a little combiner box which combines 3.5mm headphone jack and 3.5mm microphone jack into USB into a combined device. I'll just stick something random in my PC to see if that sorts it.
Thanks for the tip!

[mgb204]

As far as I understand, it relates to auto-detection features in the Realtek drivers. If nothing is plugged in it screws with the way SC4 handles audio. Being such an old game, it simply doesn't know how to handle this unexpected situation and crashes. But using Audio off is one solution, the other is plugging something into the headphone port, so SC4 doesn't have problems. So if the former didn't work, I don't think that's the problem here.

[Guus Ketelings]

Heyo, me again.
I plugged in audio-devices on both audio-outputs on my PC. Again, it worked one time (and I could save too this time). After rebooting my PC the next morning, it stopped working again. I am lost for answers really xD

[mgb204]

Thing is, as I've said previously, if you use the Audio Off command, that takes the audio system out of the equation, since SC4 simply ignores it. Much like software rendering takes your videocard and related drivers out of the equation too.

What does this mean practically speaking? In essence whatever problem must lie somewhere within your PC, either the hardware that remains in use by SC4 or some software/OS related problem.

What I can say 100% for sure is:

• There is no inherent incompatibility issue running SC4 under any version of Windows that has come to light around the community. I.e. The code itself will run on Windows from Win 2000 up to and including Windows 10.
• SC4 requires DirectX to run. But, Windows 7 comes with a newer version already, you don't need to install legacy versions of DirectX (7 in the case of SC4), the latest version always contains all the legacy code you should need to run old games.

So where does that leave us? Well, given my experience with supporting computers, I'd say the problem will be one of two things. Either there is a problem at the hardware level or there is a conflict somewhere on your PC, which is preventing/interfering with the operation of SC4.

However, one fact here is very important to consider, that the problem seems to be intermittent. So why is it that sometimes the game can start, but most of the time it doesn't? What "change" or difference is giving us the varying results? Such problems can be the hardest to diagnose, because even when you think you've "fixed" things, the problem can come back. This makes any results you get from trying solutions tentative and hard to rely on. As such, I feel it's important to rule out any potential hardware issues before moving forward.

So I'm not saying your hard drive is broken or corrupting data, but it's certainly a possibility. Just like it's also possible you have corrupted RAM. In both cases, it doesn't necessarily figure that this issue would highlight itself more generally. For example, in both cases, it could be a minor problem that only appears when referencing (reading/writing) to a very specific part of the RAM/HDD. These kind of problems do not always appear consistent either, because what part of the RAM/HDD you access at a given time is changeable. However, both of these problems are very easy to test, the purpose of doing so, as much as anything, is so moving forwards, we can have complete confidence they are not the root cause of your problems. In the case of a RAM test, perhaps a utility exists within the BIOS of your Motherboard, otherwise free utilities exist on the web. In the case of Hard Drives, all manufactures offer free diagnostic tools which will do full scans of your drives and report back any problems. In the case of the latter, it could take several hours to scan the drive. But you can click "run" and leave it unattended, it's not user-intensive at all.

That pretty much just leaves us with the Mainboard, CPU and Power Supply (PSU). Faults with these rarely simply prevent software running and when they do, almost always it ends with not only a CTD but more likely a BSOD or the computer needing to be reset at the very least to recover. As such, I think we can safely rule them out.

Once we can be absolutely sure that your hardware is functioning and in good order, there are a number of setup/configuration changes we can test in Windows to try and get to the bottom of the problem. But these can be quite intensive and if we try that before we are certain your hardware is fine, could be a humongous waste of time, should that later prove to be the case. So even if hardware faults aren't likely, it makes much more sense to do things in this order.

[Guus Ketelings]

Right, I'll run some diagnostics on the next startup of my PC. I'll get back to you with answers!

[Guus Ketelings]

And now it works again... I have not ran the diagnostics yet. I was am YouTube and am in a Skypecall and now it works. I am not saying that that is the solution, obviously not haha, merely stating that some processes might interfere with it booting properly? Running the dianostics overnight.

[mgb204]

Absolutely, a conflict with another background process is a real possibility. The hard part would be identifying the culprit, but it depends on how familiar you are with Windows startup configurations. Assuming you get the all clear on the diagnostics, you want to use Start/Run/MSCONFIG. This utility allows you to control which services and applications run on startup. To begin, you can simply select "diagnostic startup" from the first screen. Reboot after the change and see how things work out. If that reliably gets SC4 working, you'll have to manually go through the applications under the "Startup" tab first, to try and identify the problem application. If that doesn't highlight the problem, then move on to the "Services" tab. This can take a lot of trial and error though, not to mention, prepare for hardware/software to not function as intended, since you are messing with the processes needed for them to operate as intended. Obvious candidates are usually Virus scanners or similar software, but you never know what can cause such conflicts. Given how time-consuming this can be to track down, I hope you'll appreciate why I wanted to get the all clear first on the hardware side.

If you need more detailed help with this, just let me know.

[Guus Ketelings]

I guess you could say the problem is "fixed" now. Yesterday my harddrive (C) corrupted. I was able to run a recovery from my D drive, resulting in C having to be wiped. I am running a data recovery, but I don't know how much that will be able to recover. I'll simply re-install SC4 and start over