(Another) CTD fix (nVidia)

I am running Vista on a laptop with nVidia Quadro NVS 140m. I, like many others, was crashing to desktop as soon as the campaign loaded (no problems with Battle Mode). I had tried a slew of recommended solutions and none worked for me.

Long story short, I found that running the program under Windows 98/Me compatibility solved all my problems. Also uses less shared graphics memory, as a plus. To do this:

1. Open the folder your M:TW installation is in. This is probably "C:/Program Files/Total War/Medieval - Total War" or something similar.
2. Right click on your M:TW main .exe. This should be "Medieval_TW.exe". Click "Properties".
3. Under the "Compatibility" tab, select the check-box "Run this program in compatibility mode for:". In the drop-down menu, select "Windows 98 / Windows Me".
4. Click okay.

Using this method, it is not necessary to run in administrator mode or to change any options in the nVidia Control Panel. Running the program in 98/Me mode will essentially disable all graphical options that M:TW can't handle.

Enjoy!

Note that installing the XL mod will break this workaround for non-obvious reasons. I'm looking for a fix and will report back if I find one.