Whenever I first turn on my compyter, I turn on the game, then it is an indefinitly long black screen. I turn on the task manager and it minimizes. Thin I turn off the task manager and restore it, then it starts with the stardock logo. How strange.

Pill7, there is a bit of a pause before the SD logo, have you tried just waiting?

Davy, have you tried turning off the intro movies?

(user.setting file -> ShowIntroMovies FALSE)

Could not having sound drivers cause it to have that indef black screen? I wouldn't think it would but being its a brand new game wasnt to sure i formatted last night and forgot to install them. just trying to get ideas on how to fix mine when I go home so ill be able to play again.

Same issue for me, the black screen thing at any rate with a runtime error. I tried the suggestion of turning off the movies, no go. Same deal, same error.

You'll find the settings under:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\

you guys tried starting the game in windowed mode?

Setting it to windowed only gave me the C++ runtime error a ton faster  ( 

This sucks, havn't been able to play it since yesterday!

worst case scenario, install a wallpaper of sins on your desktop, and pretend you are playing...

I'll have to see if I crash more windowed. Already has 2 crashes on my Vista box. This is the first RTS I've seen where the 'save early, save often' rule applies, but I still love it.

They will get those crashes fixed in time. GalCiv proved to me these people really care.

For those of you still getting this - I just started getting it recently and went to try and figure out why by retracing my steps.

I found out for me it was a custom galaxy file that I created and put in the galaxy folder but the specific line item (in my case) that was causing the error was a string I added that I thought would change local militia settings to false. I had seen this earlier on the boards but it may have been from a beta version or not verified so the line item in particular was:

hasStartingPlanetPirates FALSE

After removing that I was able to load up the game just fine. The IC/SD reps or moderators have been coming on to say the issue sounds like a corrupt file and in this case it was, so although yours may not be the same exact issue go back and double check all the galaxy files you may have edited outside of the Galaxy Forge (i.e. in Notepad). If there was anything custom you did it may be incorrect syntax and is causing the problem. Furthermore, if you downloaded other user's custom content you may have to try just removing them 1 at a time or all to get it to work again.

Again, this exact scenario may not be the same for you, but I bet most of the "black screen" issues are from corrupt user modified .galaxy files. Maybe a compilier or error checker upon save of some sort will help prevent this in the future (because user content can easily be pushed (posted) with issues.

Thanks,
~JO

PS: Sorry for the repeat post, those of you having the issue, but I'm going to post this warning separately as well.

Yes I waited 5 min once + it works fine after turning it on the first time. Then whenever I shut down the comp and turn it back on, I doesnt start again.