Civilization III and Firefox

[Atahualpa]

I have this strange problem that whenever I start a Civ3 game with Firefox in the background, after closing civ3 the browser behaves very strange. The mousewheel stops working and after a while it may stop responding alltogether.
This is very annoying when playing PBEMs because I have to close Firefox, play the game and restart it.

Anyone else experienced something like that?

[Krill]

I have seen windows act strangely for a while after closing civ, but it has never (read: I can't remember) crashed on me. What about the system specs?

[Atahualpa]

It's a Mobile Athlon XP 1800+ with 512MB RAM and a 32MB shared memory graphics card based on some ATI chip (it said radeon 7500).
Windows XP Home SP2

However the problem existed during SP1 as well IIRC. It's not really new.
I guess this must be a firefox problem, but it's very strange.

I wanted to know if everybody else had experienced anything like this as well.

[chuckdelicious]

I've had firefox do that to me if I leave it open for a long period of time (overnight, etc.). I've never related that problem to civ3, however. But hey, maybe I'll leave a browser window open next time I have a marathon session and see what happens.

[Kloreep]

This only happens when you had the browser open when Civ3 started?

On my desktop, it doesn't matter whether I had it open when Civ3 started, but it does act strangely if I have Mozilla (I don't use the firefox version though) open when I close Civ3. My CPU will go to 100%, and Mozilla will stop responding to some things: mousewheel won't work, nor will shortcut keys or the minimize/maximize/close icons at the top. If I leave the comp be for a few minutes, though, CPU usage will go back down and Mozilla will return to normal.

[Atahualpa]

Kloreep, exactly the same is happening to me, but I have always become so impatient that I never waited long enough for it to back to normal... I fire up the task manager and close the thing... but you are right... 100% CPU usage and that stuff... strangely it only happens with Civ3, but ofc this is the only fullscreen app that is running on my system, so I can't really tell if this would happen with other games as well.

[Sabre2th]

I've used Firefox for some time now and have never had an issue like this.

If it's only Firefox that does this, perhaps you could use IE for your PBEMs? Unfortunate, yes, but it might be a way around it.

[Kloreep]

Easier way: close Mozilla before closing civ, and only then close civ. Can be a pain in some situations, but usually not for me; if necessary I just keep civ running till I'm down in Mozilla.

[Modo44]

Civ3 uses the system resources aggressively, so no wonder things stop when you close it. The system has to reclaim everything, and Windows is not very good at multitasking. So, all other applications seem to come close to a full stop. Note that most of it has to do with the user interface, not with other functions (MP3s play fine).

The best solution is to keep the large application running all the time, if only you can spare the RAM. Shutting it down and restarting will slow things down for a few moments, and it is hard (if possible at all) to avoid it in Windows. Most applications should be able to return back to normal without problems, though.

[Atahualpa]

thx for your input

I now know that I am not alone

[Shogun Gunner]

I also try to leave things running and avoid the startup/shutdown delays. When I PBEM, I need Firefox for the forum post, Outlook for the email and Civ to play the turn. Sometimes I notice the graphical features in Firefox or Outlook are incomplete or slightly transparent --- which I had chalked up to the reason Modo identified - Civ using resources aggressively.

Probably a lot of people are with you on this one Ata!

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by Modo44
Note that most of it has to do with the user interface, not with other functions (MP3s play fine).

After quitting Civ3 I've had stuttering on CDs with Windows Media Player, but then again it seems like running notepad or the calculator is enough to make WMP skip...

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
I also try to leave things running and avoid the startup/shutdown delays. When I PBEM, I need Firefox for the forum post, Outlook for the email and Civ to play the turn. Sometimes I notice the graphical features in Firefox or Outlook are incomplete or slightly transparent --- which I had chalked up to the reason Modo identified - Civ using resources aggressively.

Probably a lot of people are with you on this one Ata!

So maybe it would help setting the priority of the Civ3 process to some lower value so that the other applications get more CPU time whenever they need it?
I think with 512MB RAM I do have enough to run a browser and the game.