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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
12 years ago
Solved

Could not start the renderer [1001]

Ladies and gentlemen, can anyone help me with this?

Got SimCity 5, gone through the endless registration process with Origin and installed the game, all good, but now I can't actually play it, getting an error message: "Could no start the renderer.  Please ensure your display is set to 32 bit colour. [1001]

Which would be fine if my display was not set to 32 bit colour.  However, and I'm sure you'll agree this is a pretty crucial point, my display is in fact set to 32 bit colour.

So - what else could it be?

I've had a bit of a look through these help topics, which lamentably appears to be the only recourse we have as opposed to any actual contact with the distributors, despite their insistence on always-on-line of which I would have thought the most obvious advantage being that help would actually be available when needed.  Disappointing, but not my main gripe, I just want my game to work.

So anyway, some suggested updating graphics card drivers.  Fine, I can do that.  Windows thinks my graphic card driver is up to date - ah but what do they know, so I went to NVIDIA's website (graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 7050/NVIDIA nForce 610i) and sure enough there was an update available.  Downloaded, installed... still nothing.  Same error message.

Any other ideas?

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  • BlackjackWidow's avatar
    BlackjackWidow
    Hero (Retired)
    7 years ago

    Hi @thelunabell - Here are a few things to try (I know you've done a couple of these already, just added them in case others read this):

    1. Make sure Origin.exe and SimCity.exe are added to exception lists for your anti-virus, firewall and any other Internet security software like Ad-Block. I know when my anti-virus updates, it occasionally likes to change settings for no good reason. 
    2. Always run install programs "As Administrator"
    3. Set the desktop icons to run SimCity.exe and Origin.exe "As Administrator"
    4. If you have the sound program Nahimic 2 from MSI installed, disable or uninstall it. 
    5. If you have any mods installed, remove them
    6. Make sure your graphics drivers are updated to the most recent version. 
    7. In Origin, right-click SimCity icon, Game Properties, check the box that says "Disable Origin In-game"
    8. Set the SimCity desktop icon to run in Windows 7 or 8 compatibility mode.

    If none of these work, try a clean boot and attempt to launch SimCity. If it launches, you'll have some detective work to do, enable one startup program at a time, reboot, try SimCity, until you find the program that is blocking it. Then you can disable or uninstall the offending program. A clean boot won't stop your anti-virus, so disable that separately.

    If you still have issues, reply back with the error message and symptoms. If something works, it would be great to hear about it. Good luck!

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