In testing ... and now on Live US servers, external use of Firefox freezes it

[Kitsune]

<p>I noticed this first while Testing the new Live events for GU 52 - the mushroom circles and Tinkerfest. If I opened Firefox outside the game, it froze solid. Opening Task Manager showed that EQ2 was frozen, not the Browser, which was wrong, but it did allow me to close Firefox using it.</p><p>Although I play on an EU server, I made a character on a US one today to be able to experience the Mushtroom Rings Live. And the same thing happened again. Using Firefox outside EQ2 froze it solid. Task Manager reported it as the game being frozen, not the browser, but checking the game showed it was indeed the browser.</p><p>I always use the browser outside my game because I can leave it open at a Quest info page on Zam or Wiki and go back to it, rather than the in game one that needs to be shut down before I can continue.</p><p>I have the latest version of Firefox afaik, it auto updates, and says I have this version when I check in Help. - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11</p><p>Is anyone else experiencing this? Does anyone have a Fix for it please?? It is annoying the heck outta me. >.<</p>

[Spyderbite]

<p>I'm not sure what's going on there.. and I'm sorry your experiencing that. However, while I was documenting these events on Test I had several FireFox windows open at all times. And, I completed the first event on Live today and had FireFox open the whole time as well. So, it sounds like it might be a video problem? Perhaps update your video drivers and/or FireFox? Just taking a stab in the dark though.. cause I'm unable to duplicate the problem. :/</p>

[Beckah]

<p>I also use firefox and have had no problems on both live and test.</p>

[Kitsune]

<p>Tell me, do you get wierd effects with some spells, like a long, thin line of electric blue heading to the side of the screen? It's too fast to screenie it. Or do you sometimes get the whole screen blanking out all the hotbars and other UI windows to another color - pale green in my case - then you  can't see the contents of the UI till you minimize the screen then max it again?</p><p>I play in windowed mode that is almost the size of the monitor screen so I have access to my Task Bar.</p><p>I have just updated the drivers about a week ago, to 185.85 WHQL nvidia driver. I have an Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT with 512 ramdac video card and overall 1 Gig memory.</p><p>And dhaving said all that, I closed the game to Post the original post here, then restarted the game and tried Firefox again - and it didn't freeze for the first time in weeks... Incidentally I don't get this problem with the EU server at all, yet, which is why I am not thinking it is video drivers...</p><p>Be very interested in your opinions on this. I have lived with the other 2 errors as they are relatively minor and I didn't associate them exactly with my set up as they only started after GU 51.</p>

[Lader]

<p>did you change your shadows to gpu instead of cpu? thats the only time i experience the lines of light flashing across the screen. Even then its only there for a moment and everything is back to normal.</p>

[Kitsune]

<p>Yep, did that and yes, that line of blue effect that goes to the edge of the screen, is only there for maybe a second or two.</p><p>It is more the freezing of Firfox that both worries and annoys me.</p><p>I think maybe I had better move this to Tech Support since this seems to be my problem, not a shared one. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Thanks for the input though, guys.</p>

[Reiella]

<p><cite>Kitsune wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Tell me, do you get wierd effects with some spells, like a long, thin line of electric blue heading to the side of the screen? It's too fast to screenie it. Or do you sometimes get the whole screen blanking out all the hotbars and other UI windows to another color - pale green in my case - then you  can't see the contents of the UI till you minimize the screen then max it again?</p><p>I play in windowed mode that is almost the size of the monitor screen so I have access to my Task Bar.</p><p>I have just updated the drivers about a week ago, to 185.85 WHQL nvidia driver. I have an Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT with 512 ramdac video card and overall 1 Gig memory.</p><p>And dhaving said all that, I closed the game to Post the original post here, then restarted the game and tried Firefox again - and it didn't freeze for the first time in weeks... Incidentally I don't get this problem with the EU server at all, yet, which is why I am not thinking it is video drivers...</p><p>Be very interested in your opinions on this. I have lived with the other 2 errors as they are relatively minor and I didn't associate them exactly with my set up as they only started after GU 51.</p></blockquote><p>The graphics errors you are describing are a video fault.  I'd suggest making sure to clean your driver installation and reinstall.  Although they really shouldn't cause that [can't help to be safe though].  Do you run any other 3d accelerated games?</p>

[Kitsune]

<p>I always delete the existing drivers before putting a new one in. And yes, I play Children of the Nile, Quake 4, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Bioshock, but it has been a while since I played them. They were fine, though. Only on EQ2 have I had problems.</p><p>Also just cleaned the whole inner PC, taking out Video and Sound cards to make sure they were clean, and defragged the C partiton. Unfortunately I am now sitting twiddling my thumbs while the EU server EQ2 updates for over an hour for some obscure reason. Even patching the US server only took like 20 minutes. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /></p>

[bigsigh]

<p>What I have found is that something in the internal browser causes firefox to lock up. It also locks another program called Directory Opus. They are easy to unlock though, just close EQ2 and voila! Again though, it doesn't always happen.</p>