Simcity 4 not starting up

[Eliteforce]

I recently formatted my pc and installed new parts.  When I Installed Simcity 4 (w/o rush hour) the splash screen would appear for 1 second then go away.  Then nothing would happen.  The process is gone.  I know I can support the game, (3 Ghz Quad, 4gb ram
, GTX 275)  I have no idea what it could be.

[WC_EEND]

what OS have you got?

[Eliteforce]

what OS have you got?

Xp 32 bit.  I hear the Cd drive start running, and it runs for about 30 sec. after the splash window closes.

[WC_EEND]

hmm, that rules out any Vista-related issues. Are you aware that dual/quadcores can cause these issues as well? (because the game wasn't designed for this) You couls try whan seeing the splash screen, opening task manager, got to processes, right click simcity4.exe, select affinity and only tick ONE CPU (can be either 0,1,2 or 3) Also AMD CPU's generally cause more problems with SC4

[Eliteforce]

I set it to the first cpu and it is an AMD.  Same thing happens.

[WC_EEND]

Maybe a dumb question but you never know: is your CD damaged?

[Eliteforce]

There's a few tiny scratches, nothing that would prevent it from starting up.  I got the disks when the game came out so they're in relatively perfect condition.  I have tried torrented versions that my friend gave me, they work fine on his pc, but not on mine.  maybe it's just something with my version of windows.

[bob56]

do other CDs work on the drive?

[Eliteforce]

do other CDs work on the drive?

well I installed the game form that drive and my Sims 1 disk works fine.

[Eliteforce]

I put the game in my other cd drive and it works!  but now I cant get my Rush hour disk to Autorun so I can install it.  I think I need to get new disk drives, these are over 3 years old each.  I put the Rush hour disk in the same drive and the autorun pops up in the processes window for a half second then goes away.  the drive continues to run after the autorun goes away.

[SC4BOY]

If you get to the startup screen the CD read is probably fine.. I expect you may have the old SimCity 4.cfg in the simcity 4 directory in mydocs.. when you install sc4 this initializes based on hardware you have.. if you change hardware it may well be getting confused.. just delete it and try starting again. It will make another one

[Eliteforce]

I guess my drive started to work, because after I rebooted my pc (which may have fixed it somehow?) and inserted the disc, it installed and plays fine.  I'll update this thread if I have any more issues, thanks for the help!

[tomfoolery_79]

It's not just you.  I have the exact same problem.  I keep emmaculate care of my disks, no scratches.  Oddly, it does not do it every time, just once every  4th time maybe, but still that's fairly often.  I'm running Vista 32bit, but I have SC4 set to run in XP compatibility mode.