issue with afk

Correction... not necessarily triggered by afk.  I thought it was, but just got a blue screen while I was actively playing.  I'm now 6 hours, and 5 shutdowns into the game, 4 of which happened while I was afk, and 3 of which were blue screens.  Again, if there's more info I can provide that will help diagnose and fix the problem, I'd be happy to help... or if someone has had a similar issue, if you could point me to the fix, I'd appreciate that too.  I updated my drivers after the first blue screen, as I understand that can often cause those issues.

Windows Updates completed?  You said you updated your drivers, did that include video, audio, motherboard?

Have you tried an un/reinstall?  You can also try deleting the C:\Users\ComputerName\Documents\My Games\GalCiv3 folder, sometimes that helps.

Do you use a lot of custom ship designs or anything?

Update...   NO I don't use many custom designs, I've made 2 so far, just cus I wanted another survey ship, that doesn't seem available in the premades. Yes, I updated all my drivers, I did uninstall and reinstall.  I thought this fixed the issue, got about 90 min into a game, and another blue screen.

Then I have no clue, sorry

If something makes your computer unintentionally boot you might have a hardware issue. If that only happens under conditions of heavy load (like in games), for example your power supply could have a problem.
Once I had an Enermax power supply which worked great for nearly a year, but then reboots began to happen in 3D games. Otherwise the machine continued to run perfectly, so I was suspecting the graphics card first. But eventually replacing the power supply fixed it.

Of course there are other possibilities, hardware-wise. I'm just pointing in that direction because it's quite hard for a software error to force a contemporary operating system (like Windows 7) to reboot. Even if your NVidia driver falls flat on the face it'll rather try to reset itself than tearing the whole system down.

Donah, 

I experienced the same thing. In my case I had bad memory. If you are getting blue screens I would check your memory. GC III is memory intensive and its finding the 'bad' areas on your memory modules it sounds like. Gal Civ will NOT cause blue screens. Hardware does. 

Two things...

Get 'Who Crashed' a free program that helps identify crash logs..

Get memtest86+ (its free I think)  and run it. You have to burn it as an ISO to a disc and then tell your computer to run it when you boot up. This will run a program which will take about 6 to 10 hours and stress your memory and find out if anyone is bad. 

Or..

You can just borrow some memory plug it in and see if that works..... 

This is my experience and your problem may be different. 

Oh yes, memory...! memtest86+ really is a good thing, try that! And give it enough passes.

I got new ram, been wanting to upgrade anyway, so I've got 16 gb now... I thought it fixed the issue, got about 2 hrs into a game, when again, I got a blue screen.  Thanx for all your help by the way

if anyone following this thread cares... I'm gonna be formatting my HDD in the next couple days, and reinstalling windows fresh...  I like to do this every 9 months or so anyway, my computer seems to work so much better after I do each time, and it's well past that... I'll post again after I've had a chance to back up, reinstall, re set up, and test the game...

Try a file system check.  Run a dos window (cmd as administrator) and sfc /scannow.  If you have a bad system file you might catch it, and sfc will try to fix it.  

To double check how to you can check my help file 

https://forums.galciv3.com/461332/page/1/#3524118

I had to reinstall windows because of this, and it was nice to know that there actually was problem (windows couldn't fix it after sfc).

After a few issues reinstalling windows... Lost my disk, barrowed a disk from a friend, which ened up being the wrong version... anyway... now that my computer is up and running again, game seems to be working fine.

For me these kinds of crashes you are reporting are often heat related. So if it comes up again, be sure to check the temperature of the computer, several programs can do this if you google, that can be fixed as easy as cleaning out the dust from the blocked fans and motherboard. In fact i'd look at the back of your computer regardless, and see if it's clogged up with dust, looking inside wouldn't hurt anyway to check the video card fan isn't blocked either.

Worse case the other memory is on the video card, but heat is the more likely culprit if it comes up anymore. 

Donagh55, you deserve an award for perseverance.   I'll give you a karma point for patiently explaining your tribulations so that the developers can make a better game.