Random Crashing

[patch_110]

Hi i have a problem with the game crashing when i go to either zoom in or out not every time just randomly. not sure if it is down to CAM but only noticed it since installing the CAM. The 2 main mod's i'm using are the NAM and plugin radical ordinanceV2 not V1 which i no is incompatible with CAM. Please help as i'm tired of constantly having to save the game.
Thanks Patch

[Diggis]

This sounds like the zoom crash bug, which is a common issue.  One thing I have found that seems to minimise it is to run DAT packer on your plugins.  It is thought to be linked with windows trying to open too many files, (ie uncompressed plugins) and the DAT packer makes each folder into 1 dat file.

[patch_110]

Where will i get the dat packer from

[Diggis]

BSC Lex I believe.  It's under tools, or Wouanagaine as he built it.

[videosean]

I've finally solved my random crashing and I wanted to share how I did it.  I tried the DATpacker and it didn't change anything for me... not even how long it takes to start the game so I assume that just means disk access/fragmentation isn't where my bottleneck is.  I had problems pre-CAM so I knew CAM didn't cause it but it did seem to get worse after installing CAM and 2+GB of plugins.  9.8 times out of 10 the game crashed when I would zoom out, but sometimes if I just right clicked on the screen to center the view to that location.  I've read many things about the game not liking ATI cards and since I have an ATI X1950XT I was more than willing to accept that it's just an ATI issue... since the zooming bug could be graphics related, no?  No.  Not in my case.  Lately I've been reading about how people with dual core processors are setting the simcity.exe to be a higher priority and to use only one of the cpu cores.  Standard practice for this (in my case at least) was to start the game then alt+tab out of it to go to the task manager to set the process options of 'above normal' priority and 'CPU 0' for affinity.  The game stopped crashing but this method is a tad tedious and annoying.

Some googling lead me to this tool: http://www.robpol86.com/pages/imagecfg.php
It will modify the exe file (it has same byte size in windows list view as the original exe though) so that when you start it it will only use 1 cpu core... so that takes care of not having to set the affinity manually   I had to remove the space in the exe's file name in order to get that tool to work on it... and of course put the space back into the exe's file name in order for the game to run.

For the priority we can do that in the shortcut properties in the Target field:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c START "high priority sc4" /high "O:\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe"

"O:\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" is just where my game is installed... your path is likely to be different... just copy everything before the path.

I just got done playing for like 6 hours straight without a crash and I honestly can't remember the last time I was able to do that!  Not only was I playing but I also had Microsoft's Zune player playing MP3s and my Firefox add-on that backs up all my plugins, profile, everything also ran while I was playing the game and no crash!  No longer do I fear playing large regions

I'll have to set my game back to 1600x1200 resolution the next time I play because I really prefer it that way... I'd turned it down a notch hoping to reduce the crashes but it didn't help at all.

I hope this helps someone as I'm pretty sure it's a common problem... this random crashing on dual core machines

If anyone's curious, my System Specs:
Pentium D 805 (dual core) 2.66GHz
2GB DDR2 6400 or something like that
ATI X1950XT PCI express
Win XP 32 bit SP2
Creative X-Fi Soundcard

[RippleJet]

Good information, videosean! Better remember this if I ever decide to abandon XP...

Since this isn't CAM related, I'm moving the thread to Technical Help Requests.

[Mizral]

Sometimes i crash when i zoom out quickly so your tips might be helpfull videosean. I don't crash 9 times out of 10 but something like 1/20.. Let's just say it's frustating when you forget to save you city.

Im a bit lost in your explainations could you do a quick step by step tutorial please?