I recently purchased Civilization III and installed it on my computer. My computer meets all of the minimum listed requirements, but when I try to run the program, the graphic I get says “Out of Range HF: 30Khz-70Khz, VF 50 hz-150 hz, Current frequency FH: 172.0 Kkz, FV: 200 hz.”
The little introduction movie plays, but after that, the above comes up on my screen. Does anyone know what it is, and how to fix it?
Thank you.
Try looking at the color depth and resolution setting of your computer, the game plays fine for me with 32 bit color at 1280 x 1024, what settings are you currently using?
I was doing it at 1024X768, 32 bit. I tried it with the settings you suggested and it did the same thing. Someone suggested that my refresh rate was too high, but it’s set to 60, it doesn’t go any lower than that.
Dave what video card and monitor are you using? And which monitor is selected in the display properties?
I am pretty sure that it’s my monitor having problems-it’s 6 years old now. It’s running as “defalt monitor”, and I can’t find monitor specific drivers available for it anyway (It’s a KDS, and they say that all the drivers are enabled under plug and play in XP.) My graphics card is a Nvida pro64 (IIRC). I’m going to try switching monitors with my wife and see if that works.
I’ve got two KDS monitors here and they work fine with C3 but then again I don’t have any Nvidia cards on hand to try with. In monitor properties do you have the ability to change the refresh rate? I would also look at your video card driver and see if there is an updated driver available (never hurts (Ok nearly never hurts)). You could also try removing the monitor driver and then reboot. If that doesn’t help I’d be trying to force a monitor driver. But on the other hand if you’ve got another monitor that will do the trick, that wouldn’t be a bad way to go. Though personally I would probably spend the better part of the night making the thing work, either that or dynamite(It’s better than swallowing fist fulls of Blood pressure tabs).
It’s the refresh rate. If the monitor gets updated 60 times/sec (normally the lowest most PCs go), that’s 60Hz (and I’ll notice it flickering).
When your card is changing to the video mode requested by the game (1024x768 or 800x600 or whatever), it will typically also adjust the refresh rate. In this case, it looks like the game has requested the card crank the refresh rate up to 200Hz, which I don’t think even my HP P1100 will do even at 640x480.
I was going to suggest asking the makers of the game, but lemme do that instead:
Probable issue in online help.
Sounds like you did the first two things - I recommend action three:
Edit the "C:\Program Files\Infogrames\Interactive\Civilization 3\Civilization3.ini " file, and add the line
Refresh=60
which would (I assume), set the refresh rate of the game to 60Hz, thereby enabling you to attack indiginous people, trade with the orient, or whatever else it is you do in Civ3.
Whoops, I should read more. That same page has a patch - I’d recommend installing that first.
Well, thanks for the help, but the additional line of code didn’t work (although I went to the file directly and inserted it because I couldn’t access it using the run command as that website suggested) and after downloading the patch, the game starts telling me the Civ III CD isn’t in the drive-even when I start the game thru autorun. That required a complete uninstall/reinstall of both the patch and the game to fix (just uninstalling the patch left the game still claiming the CD wasn’t in the drive). Even after the reinstall, I still get the same video message. To add insult to injury, I installed it on my wife’s computer and it worked fine. 
:smack: :mad:
I haven’t had a chance to try switching monitors yet, that’s a PITA.