Other Forums no longer operating?  Mwahaha!

Could it be the 174 patch?  The newest build on that patch includes fixes to .dll issues that originally gave me problems. 

I'm not using Vista Rat.  But when I first purhased CivIII and CivIV, both games gave me headaches in starting up, even with the "fixes".  What I found was it, in most cases of intitializing errors it was either an unclean install, meaning corrupted or lost files during installation, which requires uninstalling, doing a Diskcheck, a defrag, and then installing with all non-essential background programs such as Anti-Virus disabled.  Some Anti-Virus programs are extremely jealous.  Or....the Config file, found by going to <START>My Docuements>My Games>Sid Meier's Civilization 4>Game Configuration.  But mostly it was a bad download, mostly. 

If you uninstall, and do the checks mentioned and then try to reinstall, you will sometimes have problems because the Civ games never fully uninstall themselves. (Much like AOL).  There are controls left in your registry that Civ see's and won't reinstall at all, or gets confused and doubles entries.  Confusing your system.  I suggest this to a lot to folks with registry issues, most never know they have them since no error ever tells you, you do.  Atleast not in words.  But try using CCleaner for Registry Mait. and repairs.  It can be found as Freeware at www.filehippo.com .  Never try to clean your own registry manually unless your comfortable doing so.  It is brain surgery on your system.  I've been using CCleaner for a couple of years now from filehippo.  It's made gaming and computer Mait. a snap.  If you get it, read the tutorial, or come back here if you need help.

If this doesn't fix it, or doesn't seem to be the fix for you, hang tight, cause there will be others along here soon to help out.

Big Welcome to 1bc Rat!