_CuRoi_
I think the easiest way to repeatedly run as an administrator is to right click on the file and choose Properties. Then select the Compatibility tab and at the bottom is a check box to Run as Administrator, so that every time it is run, even with the shortcut, it will do it automatically.

For all playing on Vista have you tried disabling "NMIndexingService" from your Task Manager's Services Tab? This caused me a lot of headaches with other programs (not just games) and was eating my hard drives. If you could post a screenie of your task manager I might be able to help beat back Vista's unflinching need to do things its way.

I have also disabled Windows Defender (Spybot works much better for me) and running Vista 64 Ultimate with the obligatory 4GB of RAM I have never had a minidump, lockup, or serious problems on the Highest settings (that wasn't due to a mod). I do get the occasional flash and on the largest random 5 star systems it does get a little laggy when zooming in, but at that point I just drop to high settings and it's fine.


P.S. Just in case your wondering why I did not use Vista's Options to shut off the indexing, I did, but Vista knows better than the user so it keeps running. Sneaky.

yea ive messed around in the task manager a lot to keep vista at bay.
all around I think vista might be to smart (or stupid) for its own good like fouraces said even when u disable sumthing it secretly runs it. grrr

anyway back to the problem Ive tried all that and now the game runs for around 2-2 1/2 hours then like on cue crashes. this wouldn't seem like a big deal but even when I have a saved game that I played for an hour. I load it up fine but then an hour later it crashes.

ready for the weird part it doesnt matter on what setting I run it at I have no problems with it until after 2 hours of game play on any of my games.

anyway I cant say for sure what is causeing the problem because I have also been messing with vista and everything else to fix the orginal problem of random lag and crashes. but now i can't even finish a game unless its 1v1 small lol

sounds like low memory, or maybe 56k modem

i have experienced some of the proble and i have figured some of them out. i own an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 5200+ 2.62 ghz, Vista 32-bit, nVidia Geforce 8600 GT X2 2gb of ddr2 800 and i had that problem at the start so i fiddled with the setting to a high performence (this is not overclocking) and i left all the graphical settings on the highest level. For big galaxies i lower the anti-ailising and the screen refreshment rate one notch lower and it runs perfectly smooth but, if that still happens just lower some more the graphics still look great.

This works on my laptop, but on my dekstop apparently it does not 'need to be applied'

Shadow, have you run perfmon in the background during a game? This might show you what part of your system is maxing out to cause the crash. Since your crash is reliably timed, and is not a corrupt file (if saves work for another two hours) then it sounds like either your memory is hitting its limit, or a system routine firing up because Vista thinks the system is Idle. Perfmon should tell you if its the RAM, but since it uses some memory itself it will probably take less than two hours to CTD. Do you hear the Vista "Ping" at the time of crash?

For those that don't know Perfmon, you can run it from the Start->Run and then type "perfmon" (no extension necessary). You can also access it from the Task Manager and click the button in the bottom right of the screen (then close Task Manager since it can block the whole screen). The graphs are pretty self explanatory.

yea i thought i might have been my memory at first but it doesnt get above 75% usage I have 2 gigs of ram. I manaually end all tasks before starting any game (through the task manager) aside from the needed ones. all other games seem to work fine no matter how long I play cept sins. I have call of duty 4 and MTW 2.

im back to thinking its a vista issue. I haven't played a game in a while and keep task manager open looking for random programs that might be running. Thats when I noticed vista just start running windows defender when ever it wants, and eats up my cpu and memory searching my comp. The problem though is it won't turn off even when I go through the control panel. Vista just runs what ever it wants when ever it wants I swear.

I think maxing memory is the issue after all but its because vista just runs programs for no real reason.

Im going to mess with it a little more

whats your graphics card, proccesor, and can you tell me what FFA stand for in the maps that are labled 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 then FFA

oh yeah also i do hear the vista ping when it crashes but that took 3 1/2 hours but tweking graphic and performance solved the problem completely no updates at all.

I would certainly take advice from someone who doesn't know what Free For All stands for

I have toned down the settings but still am getting the graphic card crash (Black screen) then after awhile I am still getting the "minidump". Any more suggestions?

This bug was caused by conflicts with the graphics card. This may have been fixed in the May M$-Tuesday updates, but I haven't been able to check yet.

getting hard lock when i play on my pc! Amd Athlon xp 3000+ 1.73 Ghz 1 GB ram with a nVidia GeForce 6200 256mb OC from 400 to 410. Windows XP Home SP3 Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live!
Ran great before I had a system Crash went from Xp Pro to XP Home and changed my video card from a Nvidia 5200 128mb card to the new card. funny the game played great with a 128 Mb card and XP pro but not Xp home with a 256 Mb card! All drivers are current. Any suggestions would be great! played the Big maps and made my own Huge maps played once for 24 hours kept thinking the tech trees should get higher then they did. Now I cant play and i was already addicted! Its a great game please send me a fix...

New Nvidia driver, not a beta.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_175.16_whql.html

Vista 32bit Home Premium + Service Pack 1
nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS 256mb + ForceWare 175.16
2GB RAM
457GB Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Any time I try to load the game up, it lags horrifically. Other times when I try to load it, it'll play fine.

I changed the settings down to High like suggested in an other thread. The game time is around 4hrs 30mins, but another save I had, did the same problems at around 2hrs 20mins.

If the game works, it works fine, with no problems at all. It just during the initial load.

The game is currently unplayable to me, it really needs to fixed. The game is great, but this one bug, is really putting me off it.

sounds like its something on your computer not the game. my specs are much lower than yours except i have vista ultimate. i can run fine on the highest setting for maps upto 50-60 planets. then i have to start backing it off.

my lag issue was fixed with lastest nvidia driver released last week.

The most likely problem is the nForce 175.16 driver. I was having crashes all of a sudden (I forgot that I updated the driver). I tried many of the suggestions from the forum, but then I realized it just started happening after I installed a new driver. Roll back to the previous driver version, 174.74 (April) or 174.53 (March). The game will work like a charm again with highest settings - it was unusable even with high settings with 175.16 driver.

Hope this helps.

Dash

Worked like a charm mate.

I rolled back to 169.25 and it works flawlessly now.

Seems that nVidia have messed up on their drivers.

installing the new nvidia drives fixed the problem for me

I tried rolloing back the drivers that did not work for me. This is nuts. I dont think it is a driver issue how come my computer only crashes in Sins?

The best solution for getting Sins to work under Vista is not to have Vista on your computer in the first place. Apart from using a lot of system resources for itself (which good operating systems do not do), Vista is full of bugs and very hard to control as an end user. I had Vista on my system and I asked a refund and swapped for XP pro which works well. I asked the refund on the basis of consumer laws here which say that the product must be fit for the purpose it was sold for. The only reason why Vista is spreading is because of the deals Microsoft is forcing on companies like Dell. If consumers had to walk into a shop and choose and operating system, only the unaware would buy it. XP pro on the other hand is now stable. How many years has it taken for that to happen? Microsoft sells buggy rubbish operating system software and relies on the consumers to fix the bugs through use, headaches, huge losses of time and often loss of money in their business. When I told Vista support that there were no drivers for some of my hardware, they told me to get new hardware. That's the difference between being backwardly compatible and being backwards.

I dont think that is true forging_ahead. I have found Vista to more stable than XP. It is a resource whore and I think that needs to be improved. I suspect the performance issues related to games like this are primarily because this game was designed to run on XP. Had it been made for DX10 I think it would have been better. Having said all that I'm still pissed it doesn't work properly on my machine.

What should you need pack 1, 2, 3, 4 and more if the software is properly written? I've written commercial software and it never needed a succession of pack to fix the bugs.

I doubt very much that Vista is more stable than XP. It would certainly defy any logic. XP has been around for years and usually an established OS is more stable than the new kid on the block. I have a friend with Vista, he tried to fire up his computer yesterday and got a nasty message that one of the system files was corrupted. Solution? Get the recover disks from the manufacturer and of course, that wipes out all your data. The other solution is to use an XP recovery CD rom, boot with it, save the data and format Vista out of existence and then install XP. It works well for him now.

I just want to add that I solved my problem with this game crashing. My desktop resolution was out of line (higher) than the resolution the game was running at. By switching the game to the same resolution as the desktop this fixed the problem.