Says Launching Sim City 4 but then does nothing.

[Teahigh]

I bought Sim City 4 during the Fall Sale. I still haven’t gotten to play it and it has been a good month or so. Whenever I click play Sim City 4 nothing happens. It says launching Sim City 4 but then nothing happens. It also says that I am currently playing the game for 2 seconds then I’m back to being just online. I’ve tried to set it to just one processor but it still doesn’t work. How do I fix this problem?

[Helix26]

It is probably crashing but not saying anything to tell you that it is. During a crash, exception reports are added to the "Documents\SimCity 4\Exception Reports" folder. Try this to see if it resolves your issue:
- Right-click on "SimCity 4 Deluxe" in your steam library and then click properties.
- Uncheck Enable Steam Community In-Game
- Click on Set Lunch Options... then put this in the text box without the quotes: "-CPUCount:1"

Let me know if this works.

[Amarinth]

Here are a few things to try that are most likely to cause an issue with this title:

1. Download and run the latest DX9 redistributable: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109
Simcity 4 doesn't seem to come with a DX9 installer, so you need to make sure you have the latest version installed manually. And yes even if you have DX10 or 11 installed you still need to install DX9 seperately, because DX9 and older aren't supported by the DX10/11 packages.

2. Download and install the latest driver for your graphics card directly from the website of AMD or Nvidia (if you have a dedicated card in a desktop) or from your laptop or motherboard manufacturer (if you are using a laptop or integrated graphics card). Don't rely on windows update or third party driver-update tools as they often get it wrong. Even if you have the latest driver installed already, re-run the installer just in case one of the files is missing or has become corrupted.

3. If you are on Windows Vista, 7 or 8 and you currently have the game installed somewhere within either the Program Files or Program Files (x86) folder, try uninstalling the game and then reinstalling it somewhere else by selecting the "add custom install location" option during Steam's install process and setting up a different games folder (for example C:/Games/Steam). This will eliminate any problems with the more stringent file access permissions that the Vista/7/8 OS's introduced.

4. Another common issue is the default resolution the game first starts up in - this is a very low resolution (by modern standards), which some monitors don't support. To get around this try forcing the game to start at your current desktop resolution. To do this go to your Steam games library and r-click on Simcity 4 and click Properties. Click "Set Launch Options" and in the box that appears enter the following
-CustomResolution:enabled -rWWWWxHHHH
and replace WWWW with the width and HHHH with the height, so for example for the resolution 1920x1080 you should enter: -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080

[Teahigh]

Originally posted by Helix26:

It is probably crashing but not saying anything to tell you that it is. During a crash, exception reports are added to the "Documents\SimCity 4\Exception Reports" folder. Try this to see if it resolves your issue:
- Right-click on "SimCity 4 Deluxe" in your steam library and then click properties.
- Uncheck Enable Steam Community In-Game
- Click on Set Lunch Options... then put this in the text box without the quotes: "-CPUCount:1"

Let me know if this works.

Sorry to say but it didn't. Im going to try Amarinth's plan and folow his instructions. Thank you though for the help.

[Teahigh]

Amarinth! You are a god send. Thank you so much!

[Helix26]

Originally posted by Tankman652:

Originally posted by Helix26:

It is probably crashing but not saying anything to tell you that it is. During a crash, exception reports are added to the "Documents\SimCity 4\Exception Reports" folder. Try this to see if it resolves your issue:
- Right-click on "SimCity 4 Deluxe" in your steam library and then click properties.
- Uncheck Enable Steam Community In-Game
- Click on Set Lunch Options... then put this in the text box without the quotes: "-CPUCount:1"

Let me know if this works.

Sorry to say but it didn't. Im going to try Amarinth's plan and folow his instructions. Thank you though for the help.

Thanks for letting me know and good to hear you got it working. I'll take note of Amarinth's steps but do note that SimCity 4 may still need -CPUCount:1 as lots of people have had issues with stability with more than two cores. (I had been playing for hours today and had noticed it starting exiting back to the desktop for no noticable reason but not having the In-Game Community it seemed to fix that for me as I no longer have problems starting it the rest of the day.)

Hopefully a list of complete steps could be produced and incorporated into the Steam distro for other customers.

[Zenotetsuken]

None of those things seemed to work for me, thanks for the help though.