Cities in Motion (and possibly other OpenGL games) Startup Crash Fix For ATI/AMD Cards

Posted: February 10th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hardware, Tips/Tutorials
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UPDATE: I was curious as to what this FAQ item was for Atom Zombie Smasher, so I tried the demo. Nothing appears, just the exe starts up. Seems the same atigktxx.dll trick does the job for this game as well, it loads up just fine now.

Looks like Cities in Motion is an OpenGL game with the exact same issue that The Polynomial had for a few months. On drivers after Catalyst 10.4, it appears crossfire is breaking the game from working, and there is no way to disable it on a 4870×2 like myself. Some single gpu cards may be affected, so you might as well try this, too.

The simple fix should be placing 10.4′s atigktxx.dll into the game folder. Here’s an alternative fix that may or may not work for you if you have tried this atigktxx trick.

Do note that the file is from the 64-bit Vista/7 drivers, I’m not sure what the effect will be on 32-bit, XP, or on the latest 6 series cards. If you have crashes or freezes that happen after the game menu has loaded, then you might have a different problem unrelated to this. The beta, demo, and final release all should act the same. If the demo worked before (on drivers after 10.4) while the final does not, then you probably have a different issue.

Last Modified: September 15th, 2011
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50 Comments on “Cities in Motion (and possibly other OpenGL games) Startup Crash Fix For ATI/AMD Cards”

  1. 1 roce said at 3:55 am on February 12th, 2011:

    thx a lot for this solution! works fine.

  2. 2 kavselj said at 12:52 pm on February 22nd, 2011:

    sweet, never would’ve figured this out :)

  3. 3 city said at 2:42 pm on February 22nd, 2011:

    final version on steam isnt’ working.
    anybody knows how i can put the dll on steam version?

  4. 4 kn00tcn said at 5:59 pm on February 24th, 2011:

    steam isn’t any different, same game folder, same fix

  5. 5 Kris said at 10:07 pm on February 25th, 2011:

    Works for Steam retail, thanks for the fix.

  6. 6 Who? said at 6:22 am on February 27th, 2011:

    actually does not work in xp 32bits. whatta shame

  7. 7 kn00tcn said at 1:17 am on March 2nd, 2011:

    run the XP32 10.4 cat installer, cancel it when it’s done extracting, open a cmd prompt in a folder that’s something like ‘C:\ATI\Support\10-4_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_wdm_enu\Packages\Drivers\ Display\W76A_INF\B_98282‘, then type ‘expand atigktxx.dl_ atigktxx.dll‘, move that dll into the game folder, assuming it exists for xp

    this is how to get any file out of past drivers without reinstalling

  8. 8 Collider said at 5:03 pm on March 3rd, 2011:

    Worked with Windows 7 32

  9. 9 Name said at 7:48 am on March 8th, 2011:

    thanks

  10. 10 T3raYon said at 4:08 pm on March 14th, 2011:

    Man, you made my day with this info to fix the game. Funny as it is not even the official forum is aware of this. Thank You!

    (I made a link from the official forum to this post for others to help…)

  11. 11 kn00tcn said at 6:51 pm on March 14th, 2011:

    i’m pretty sure the official forum is already aware, i saw the dev link it weeks ago during beta, plus that’s where i first posted it

  12. 12 . said at 11:14 am on March 18th, 2011:

    What folder are you guys talking about?
    The folder documents??

  13. 13 kn00tcn said at 6:13 pm on March 18th, 2011:

    the game’s folder where the exe is

  14. 14 Anonymous said at 12:33 pm on March 20th, 2011:

    I have the final version, but when I put this file in the game folder, it doesn’t work at all. It seems to open the game but then just returns to desktop instantly.
    I’m working on windows 7 32bit

  15. 15 kn00tcn said at 2:11 pm on March 20th, 2011:

    on what driver & card?

  16. 16 Name said at 3:19 pm on March 20th, 2011:

    ati radeon x1650

  17. 17 kn00tcn said at 11:25 pm on March 22nd, 2011:

    that’s a legacy card, so what driver are you on?

  18. 18 Another one said at 6:20 pm on March 23rd, 2011:

    I’m having the same problem with the demo. When I start the game after install it goes through the 2 logos and then black screen with music. After I close it, anytime I try to restart it shows the logos and black screen with no music. Either way, no game. I tried dropping the atigktxx.dll file into the game folder. When I start the game, a black screen flashes, a second later it does it again, and then nothing.

    I have an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card and diver version is 8.561.0.0
    Under properties for my card, I tried update driver but no updates could be found so I assume it is up to date. Am I out of luck?

  19. 19 kn00tcn said at 4:27 am on March 24th, 2011:

    i’d never trust the OS to know what to update for 3rd party drivers
    now mobility is a whole other issue, some brands specifically force ati to disable their drivers, so check your laptop brand’s site for drivers, or there are tutorials to modify a desktop driver to install on a laptop
    i think ‘catalyst version’ is the more important info instead of that 8.* driver version, so open CCC to see it

    the main thing would be i guess having a catalyst version before 10.4
    x1600 became legacy a couple years ago, so that made only a few driver updates a year, i think there was a legacy 10.2 if i remember

  20. 20 Max said at 5:45 pm on March 25th, 2011:

    Have the same problem and im also using a x1600.

    Just checked and yes we are using 10.2… that’s a good thing or a bad thing?

  21. 21 kn00tcn said at 4:24 pm on March 26th, 2011:

    looking at the CiM requirements, it says OpenGL 3.0, which came out a couple years after x1600, so… i guess you cant run it

  22. 22 Nico said at 10:42 pm on April 2nd, 2011:

    I think I have the same problem, or a similar one. I played this game perfectly in Windows XP SP3, but now I changed to Windows 7 (Ultimate – 32bits) and the game won’t start. When I double click the icon the screen goes black for one second and then I’m returned to the desktop :(.

    I tried changing the compatibility of the game to XP SP2 and XPSP3, I tried updating the video card drivers, I tried reinstalling twice, etc but nothing made it work.

    I found this website and I wanted to try this, but I don’t have ATI, I have nVidia (GeForce 9500GT), so I assume the solution this website offers won’t work… so does anyone know a similar solution for nVidia cards? (if that’s the problem)

    Thanks in advance.

  23. 23 kn00tcn said at 6:55 pm on April 3rd, 2011:

    @Nico, i dont know what to say, it sounds like something bigger is broken since you cant even see the intro logos
    check your other games, particularly opengl ones, you could try the polynomial demo and atom zombie smasher demo, since both of those had the similar ati issue

  24. 24 Nico said at 9:57 pm on April 3rd, 2011:

    I downloaded the demo of Polynomial. I tried to install it but I got another error about the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library closing the application in an unusual way =/

    But in the way it crashed, it was similar to CiM, the screen goes black once or twice and I’m returned to the desktop (this time with an error message at least).

    I have more details now: I installed Euro Truck Simulator and when I tried to run it I got another error message about OpenGl. The game suggested changing the game settings from OpenGL to DirectX. I did that and the game worked perfectly.

    I also play League of Legends, but it doesn’t use OpenGL and it works great, so I think it definitely has something to do with OpenGL, which is something from the video card, right?

  25. 25 kn00tcn said at 9:42 pm on April 5th, 2011:

    @Nico opengl is like directx ya, which could get affected by drivers that are not properly installed or broken… but those vc++ errors could also mean you might not have that installed properly either

  26. 26 BlackRice said at 4:54 am on April 10th, 2011:

    Thanks man! It’s working! Sweet…

  27. 27 al-gore said at 7:37 am on April 14th, 2011:

    having the same problem. it goes to black screen and back to desktop whenever i click on the .exe file. Did anyone find the solution yet?
    Greatly appreciated! Cheers!

  28. 28 Greywolf said at 12:05 am on May 1st, 2011:

    If you run it in windows mode, the game sometimes tells you that your graphics card is incompatible.

    For example, the x1650 (pro or not, sapphire or not) is incompatible.

  29. 29 kn00tcn said at 6:40 pm on May 1st, 2011:

    @greywolf, because that’s not an opengl 3.0 card, this issue is for newer cards that are supposed to run it, but cannot after 10.4 drivers

  30. 30 Papa said at 1:53 pm on June 3rd, 2011:

    Just moved file in game dir and started up right away.

  31. 31 Skeptik said at 10:17 pm on July 31st, 2011:

    Works like a charm, I have been searching google for a couple of hours!! Please post this on Cities in Motions Forum for others with AMD’s bad driver team…

    Once again, thanks!!

  32. 32 kn00tcn said at 4:36 pm on August 1st, 2011:

    i’m the first result on google for ‘cities in motion crash’, how can you be searching for hours?

    i posted it before the game came out, & other people including the devs have linked it, so… no real need to post again

  33. 33 Name said at 9:02 pm on August 16th, 2011:

    i have done all this and i get
    motion_112506_crash_2011_8_16T4_15C0.mdmp in the game’s folder

  34. 34 kn00tcn said at 11:17 pm on August 16th, 2011:

    @Name, on what card, what drivers

  35. 35 igho said at 10:34 pm on September 23rd, 2011:

    I`m using ati radeon x1650 pro, when I start the games, it`s blank but the sound it`s play nicely, I wait for an hour but still blank, how do I fix this, I want to play the games

  36. 36 kn00tcn said at 6:13 pm on September 24th, 2011:

    @igho, the game requirements say you need opengl 3.0, so anything below radeon hd 2 series is too old & unsupported (& for nvidia, anything below geforce 8 is too old)

  37. 37 Jasper said at 10:13 am on October 9th, 2011:

    Thnkx, after new win7x64 install the game dind work, now with this trick it finally works!!

  38. 38 Jasper said at 11:48 am on October 9th, 2011:

    The game works, but chrashes when loading a map…..

  39. 39 kn00tcn said at 8:09 pm on October 10th, 2011:

    @Jasper, what card? i think there are known crashes in the game, make sure you’re patched up

  40. 40 Deputy Dog said at 11:30 am on October 19th, 2011:

    Thanks it works!!

  41. 41 vs said at 3:46 am on December 26th, 2011:

    Thanx!

  42. 42 Alexx said at 12:53 pm on December 28th, 2011:

    HERO! :D

  43. 43 Redbar2yk said at 7:38 pm on January 20th, 2012:

    Help i tried the dll file but did not work what can i do

    windows 7
    Radeon x1650

    please help me!!!

  44. 44 kn00tcn said at 5:30 pm on January 21st, 2012:

    @Redbar2yk, an x1650 is unsupported by the game, you need opengl 3.0

  45. 45 Vinny said at 7:45 pm on April 29th, 2012:

    Can someone PLEASE tell me where the game file is when installed on STEAM?????

    I putted the .dll on steam folder where the icon of CIM is, and on the

  46. 46 kn00tcn said at 5:36 am on April 30th, 2012:

    @Vinny, the dll goes wherever the cim.exe is, which should be in the folder, \Steam\steamapps\common\cities in motion\?

  47. 47 Roups said at 5:04 am on June 26th, 2012:

    Thank you very much, it’s working perfectly now with my hd 6950 in Crossfire! :)

  48. 48 Quiteright said at 5:07 am on July 27th, 2012:

    The firm thanks you

  49. 49 Tim said at 2:08 am on November 9th, 2012:

    Thank for posting this!

  50. 50 Blake said at 2:10 pm on January 21st, 2013:

    Thank you so much for this post. Instantly resolved my problem.

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