~f51e43.tmp -- the mystery process?

[mengo76]

hi all, lets see if anyone else has experienced this:

the past couple days i've noticed a process in my task manager called ~f51e43.tmp . i was afraid it could be a virus or worm or something. so i killed the process and been trying to contact my local guru about it but haven't reached him. but i just fired up civ3 now (after yet another crash) and lo and behold, the damn process spawns right there and then!

anyone know or suspect anything about this? is civ3 supposed to spawn this process (which takes up 780K memory and practically no cpu cycles)? or could my civ3 be infected with something? by the way, i have the patch on, but i don't know if this behavior was occurring before i patched.

[mengo76]

duh, how about this: when i quit civ3, the temp process disappears..... so i guess its not a worm

well, i don't think i have actually quit the game in a long time... after a certain number of crashes in a row i just give up starting it again

[typongtive]

I have had the exact same problem...i noticed it after i had created my own map... also is anyone else having probs with civ3.exe crashing all the time...

[The Viceroy]

Hmm could be anything .. what operating system are you guys running this on ? Is it always the same name of process ??

I think its the kind of question best answered by Firaxis ..

[Gramphos]

I think that is the process that loads BICs

[mengo76]

i'm running win2kpro

the process was always the same name, but i didnt restart my machine... the file ~f51e43.tmp actually exists in some temp directory with a bunch of other ~*.tmp files which i guess have nothing to do with civ3.

as for crashes, civ 3 was locking up my entire machine (even ctrl-alt-del did nothing) regularly up to about 3 days ago to the point where i couldn't stand playing any more. it was 15 minutes of play, 5 minutes of restart... and whenver it locked up, the last savegame file written -- whether it was autosave or manual -- would be corrupt. so i gave it a rest for a day or so, gave my machine a clean restart, and the game never locked up again -- just crashed. windows would bring up a warning dialog box and dr watson would start. and after the civ3 process disappeared, the temp process would remain.


(just had to use a santa smily )

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Sounds like SafeDisc working its magic. When I've seen this behavior from other retail products it's usually due to the copy protection, but I could be totally off-base, I'm not sure.

Dan

[herwin]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
Sounds like SafeDisc working its magic. When I've seen this behavior from other retail products it's usually due to the copy protection, but I could be totally off-base, I'm not sure.

Dan

Would someone lean on SafeDisc to test their magic on some of the more unusual configurations out there, like a Mat****a SR-8187 DVD drive running on a G4 laptop? Their copy protection is preventing me from enjoying the copy of Civ3 that I bought not too long ago. I suspect more owners of legal copies can't play the game than there are bozos with illegal copies that it prevents from playing the game.

[typongtive]

I am on windows Me. And yes it always does that same tmp file...

[typongtive]

ok this is interesting the filr is in my Restore/temp folder...what the..plus there are others..would erasing this actually maybe help get rid of the prob

[Obi Wan]

Re: ~f51e43.tmp -- the mystery process?

Originally posted by mengo76
the past couple days i've noticed a process in my task manager called ~f51e43.

This seems to be a part of the new copy and debug protection Firaxis put in the patch. It looks like the main difference between the original version and the patch is not the bug fixing but the protection stuff. I also have the impression that some of the new bugs in the patch result from this.

[Colonel Kraken]

My Experience with f51e43

I have an old system (233 AMD K6), and even though I have a lot of RAM and a 32MB graphics card, the game still runs a bit slow. So, to speed things up, I use [CTRL][ALT][DEL] to close all the non-essential background programs.

I noticed this ~f51e43.tmp program but had no idea what it was for (had never seen it before). I kind of assumed it was for CivIII, but I also saw the CivIII exe listed. Well, I decided to "End Task" for it anyway.

No Problems. Civ III runs fine without it. So, I always end up closing it while playing Civ.

Hmmm. . . . go figure.

[phix]

Originally posted by typongtive
I have had the exact same problem...i noticed it after i had created my own map... also is anyone else having probs with civ3.exe crashing all the time...

Yes... all the time. I can never make it past 300 AD. Sometimes I don't make it out of 600 BC. I've had it crash during the AI moves, and sometimes while shift-clicking items into the build queue.