f13.net

Bah I'm shaking with the jonses to play CIv4 on my fast box, but Civ4 requires Directx 9.0c which is not yet available for x64 Pro.  Early adopting has never stood me well.  Do I have any options or does someone know when Ballmer will get around to fully supporting his latest operating system?

Can't you run in 32-bit mode or somesuch?

In general yup and it works well - but Civ4 won't start unless it detects 9.0c and 9.0c cancels the install after the opsys version check.

I figure I'm screwed for now but always the hope there's someone out there smarter than me. :)

Thats the reason I installed 32bit XP on my Athlon64 box, not worth the hassle for a gaming rig.

You could try VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/), perhaps? Here's a trial (http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/eval.html) too.

Hey that's a thought - I have a licensed copy though it is the enterprise version.  Still after going through emulation it may be no better than playing on my old 1.3Ghz pentium.  Worth a shot though.

I grabbed a trial version of WinXP x64... and am now back to 32 bit XP.  There were just too many things that didn't have 64 bit drivers... my printer, my sound card(AC'97 has not impressed me), my crappy (but still useful)digital camera, Daemon-Tools, etc, etc.

I'm now running XP Pro 32 bit.  Basically the same OS, with less hassle.

Alkiera

There's no 32-bit compatibility mode for it?  (I learned love XP compatibility mode while I was running Vista.)  That bites.   :|

Have the tried the software developer redistributable version (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9930efa6-9f7b-4c8a-aea2-97dd6ab307a2&displaylang=en)? It says it supports XP 64 bit.

Edit: fixed long URL

This is one of those Laugh or Shriek moments.  Yeah a couple of days ago I tried to install that SDK and when the progress bar didn't show any files updated I figured it too failed and gave up, reinstalling XP 32, and then ran into even worse driver problems (A/C sucks).  Since then I've reinstalled x64.  So for giggles when I saw Trippy's link I actually tried running the game after running the zero-progress directx installer.

Well that worked.  Wiped a machine for nothing but ok.  So now I can run the icon, see the loading screen, and see the XML progress bar.  Which then bombs out with no error.

Ok well all I really wanted to understand here on f13 were the DirectX issues so I'll take it up with support next.  But I certainly welcome any suggestions... ;)

Freaking DFI lanparty board has been a disappointment.

Do you have another DirectX 9.0C game you can try out to verify whether or not the issue is with the DirectX install? You can also try running dxdiag.exe to see if it reports any problems. Civ IV is very flaky even on a 32-bit Windows XP system (I'm getting all sorts of long pauses and graphical glitches on my machine). I wouldn't be surprised if it just doesn't run properly on XP 64 bit, even with a properly installed DirectX 9.0C.

I think I'm seeing the more widespread XML parser problem - it fails at CheckXML and when I check the log the only file with any entries complains about a missing crc.dat file.  I've been going through some of the suggestions on CivFanatics to fix it but as yet no joy.

Is there even a 64 bit version of mIRC yet? How about Promise IDE drivers?

The 64bit OS thought never crossed my mind when I got an A64. Normal XP for me.

Why would you need a 64-bit version of mIRC? Some Promise products have 64-bit drivers. Check their downloads page:

http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp

Finally got the last problem fixed.  I learned the installer devs violated the first rule of feedback - it's more important to tell the end-user what you're about to do than what you just did.  I'll bet dollars to donuts the vast majority of people reporting CheckXML problems are actually having hardware/audio problems - InitAudio is actually the step that fails, CheckXML is the step before it.  A/C 97 can lick me - I'm never buying another mobo with it.  As far as the 9.0c confusion - I suspect all that SDK installer did for me was twiddle the registry so 9.0c would work.

/mumble
"Early adopters are masochists"
"Early adopters are masochists"
"Early adopters are masochists"
"Early adopters are masochists"
"Early adopters are masochists"
"Early adopters are masochists"

Yep. I can't complain in my case, though. Been worth every tuft of torn hair (my tv/monitor).
I do love my SoundStorm DD5.1 chipset. Onboard hardware ftw. Next pc, I'll probably follow the herd and put in a Creative card. Need hardware sound imo.