My modem keeps resetting when I play Civ V...

[BlackDragon]

I know it sounds weird, and that causation does not equal correlation, but it's extremely consisten. My internet's working fine. I start playing Civ V. 5 minutes in, my modem starts resetting every few minutes. Shut down the game, internet stabilizes again. Next day, same pattern.

Is this just a series of really crazy coincidences, or is there some way the game COULD be causing my connection to bounce repeatedly? It's not a big deal at the moment, but if I ever wanna play Civ V online with a friend, it... could be problematic. >_>;

[kafjack]

It doesn't sound all that weird to me. I have a similar problem with a different game. Every time the game crashes/ disconnects from the game servers it disconnects my internet connection as well. Although they try to claim that it is my internet connection. Except like what you are saying it only occurs when the server disconnect/ crash occurs, and not with any other game or service I've ever used.

[BlackDragon]

Hmm... but Civ isn't even making any comments about server-connections or lack of same. Actually, why would it even be trying to connect to a server while I'm just single-playing?

Incidentally, this is definitely something new - I've put a coupla' hundred hours into Civ V in the past without experiencing anything like this. I just got back into it after a break of... maybe a few months? Maybe just one or two, I forget. Either way, if it IS the game causing this, it must be due to something that changed in a relatively recent patch...

[The Rock God]

Disable Steam Cloud. See if it still happens.

Disable Steam Overlay in-game. See if it still happens.

Play with Steam in offline mode. See if it still happens.

[BlackDragon]

Disabling the Steam Cloud did the trick... and now it all makes sense! Those 'random' reboots happened every time the game autosaved, and tried to push those saves to the cloud. I still have no idea why a cloud-save attempt would trigger a modem reboot, but at least there's a logical connection now.

I'm not a big fan of 'cloud-saves' anyway, so this is hardly a major sacrifice. Thanks for the help, Rock-God!

EDIT: Nope, false alarm. Seems like it just took a little while longer to get started this time - or maybe I was a bit too quick to tie it all up in a neat little bow with the 'Autosave to cloud' idea. >.< Well, trying the Steam Overlay idea next... at least these experiments have proven to my satisfaction that this unstability IS tied to Civ V... SOMEHOW.

[BlackDragon]

Well, final verdict on The Rock God's suggestion... turning off the Cloud and Steam Overlay seemed to greatly reduce the frequency of the reboots, from 'within minutes of reconnecting' to 'once every half hour or so'. Switching Steam to offline-mode solved the problem entirely, but of course then I can't chat with my friends on Steam or whatnot either, so it's kind of a downer. :-(

I wonder what's causing this. None of my other Steam-games have this problem.

[The Rock God]

I was hoping you'd be back with some kind of an update on this. That turning off cloud and overlay only reduced the frequency, while going offline seems to have eliminated it, makes me think it's a problem with Steam. No clue just what it could be. Only thing I can think of is to reinstall the Steam client, and opt of the beta if you're using it.

While understandably annoying for you, I find this problem interesting. A program causing an issue with an external device is pretty rare.

That made me think of another question: Are you also behind a router, or straight to the modem?

Things to maybe look at (with everything turned back on):
Exit the Steam client. Bring up task manager, and show all processes. Sort by CPU use. Start the Steam client. Check TM for anything new besides Steam. Start Civ5. Check for anything else suddenly using the CPU. When the problem occurs, check again.
Check your Windows Event Viewer logs for around the time it occurs. May be a clue in there.

[BlackDragon]

Hmm... interesting idea. Sounds like a full investigation is required! As for your questions, I'm not using the Beta, but I AM behind a (really crappy) router.

My router tends to randomly shut out any device trying to access it through the wi-fi connection, from my smartphone to my consoles, and occasionally it just locks straight down so that my PC can't access the internet either, despite being wired directly to it. A quick reboot usually clears that up... but while I wouldn't put this kind of cyber-terrorism past the bloody thing, I don't see HOW it could force my MODEM to reboot, under such suspiciously specific circumstances...

But yeah, I value a good riddle too, at least when I have a workable work-around for the issue itself. I'll try monitoring the process with the task-manager and see what more clues I can dig up...