"Desact.monitor" When I'm playing my game (Sid Meier's Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword Ex. pack), at random times, my monitor will "flash" between a minimized (slightly) black screen and a full black screen. The full black screen will also flash "Desact.monitor" in a grey dialog box. Any ideas on what is causing this?

you will have to torrent it
use bittorrent
LINK:
http://kat.ph/sid-meiers-civilization-v-skidrow-t4458029.html

Not really adivisble, but a way to solve it

Read this article it's very good:
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/how-to-make-old-games-work-on-windows-7-969445?artc_pg=2

It basically says to get VirtualBox for old Windows games and DOSBox for old dos games.

VirtualBox link:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

DosBox link:
http://www.dosbox.com/

Right Click the shortcut to run the game, click "run as administrator" and "run in compatibility with windows xp"

a little more detail about the problem please....

Okay, i play Civ IV on my system and i run Vista as well. Your best bet is the tweak with the compatibility. Find the install folder and look for the .exe that launches the game (civ.exe i think, don't hold me to that though). Right click on it and click on properties, then the compatibility tab. Try dropping the compatibility to win xp and see if that helps. If it doesn't, post your system specs and we'll work from there

change save files location to ex. C:\ToT\ . Folder name have to be DOS 6.0 compatibile :)

you should find it on www.btjunkie.com
enjoy

Delete update data.

Sounds like your dedicate video card bit the dust and you're back using the onboard video, which would absolutely be the reason why things got choppy-- it can handle the demands put on it by the games.

A new dedicated video card would fix the problems.

this is ether a video driver problem of a video card setting problem. so try updating your video card drivers and if problem persists,configure your video card settings.