With the latest beta release, I'm getting the old Vista "Not Responding" alerts whenever I try to use my mouse at any time compression 5 min or greater. This includes group selection, menu pull down, etc. Keyboard commands do not appear to be affected. I can cycle through units using space bar and back space for instance, but any attempt to select a group with the mouse results in "Not Responding". At time compression 1 min and below the mouse acts as it always has.

 

Buddha

The game is acting as it is supposed to act is about all I can say. When the game has to do a lot of work, it does respond to the operating system less frequently. Your particular system for one reason or another seems to really like throwing up not responding messages and there isn't much we can do about that except to tell you to buy a faster one .

 

HC could be designed to run the user interface in separate threads from the game mechanics but it just wasn't designed that way 20 years ago so for the time being it seems you'll have to learn to work the not responding mechanism or run at a time compression level that leaves the computer less burdened.

The game is acting as it is supposed to act is about all I can say. When the game has to do a lot of work, it does respond to the operating system less frequently. Your particular system for one reason or another seems to really like throwing up not responding messages and there isn't much we can do about that except to tell you to buy a faster one .

 

HC could be designed to run the user interface in separate threads from the game mechanics but it just wasn't designed that way 20 years ago so for the time being it seems you'll have to learn to work the not responding mechanism or run at a time compression level that leaves the computer less burdened.

 

That's what I was afraid of. What puzzles me is that with my old, slower, single core system I never had these problems. Now I have a dual core, substantially faster system and things are constantly Not Responding. Harpoon just happens to be the one I can addresss here. Since I tend to believe Vista is the culprit in most of my problems, I was hoping maybe some other unfortunate Vista user had figured out a way to avoid this latest hassle.

 

Buddha

Buddha, since I've got DLLs on the brain, you don't happen to have the datadump or googleearth dll active and using up your computing power making the Nort Responding messages more frequent do you? It'd be too easy of an answer

Buddha, since I've got DLLs on the brain, you don't happen to have the datadump or googleearth dll active and using up your computing power making the Nort Responding messages more frequent do you? It'd be too easy of an answer

Tony,

 

Always glad to help. Is the googleearth.dll active only when Google Earth is running? If so, the the answer to that question is no as regards Time Compression/Not Responding. As to the datadump.dll, my ExportDLLs folder contains only the one for Google Earth and the new Unit Window dll that I just added a few hours ago.

 

I wish I could provide more details, but the fact is that in Vista, "Not Responding" seems to translate to "Something's hosed here, but we don't know what it is". MS had a similar issue back with version 2 point something called UAEs or "Unrecoverable Application Errors". They finally fixed that with an upgrade, but to hope for the anytime soon for Vista is probably unrealistic.

 

Buddha

Yes, if the DLL is there then the game is spending resources sending information to the DLL even if Google Earth isn't open. Disabling it by renaming it to an extension other than .dll or removing the file will ease the processing burden. That may regain some responsiveness for you. Vista will show not responding in heavy game action because the game really and truly isn't able to respond to user interface events when running to many calculations. That isn't a Vista 'problem' at all, Vista is just a little more sensitive than previous versions of Windows in looking for those situations.

Tony,

 

I don't use the Google Earth function very often, so I'll disable it and see what happens. If this facet of Vista is an improvement over XP, I fail to see the benefit. I've been using Windows since it was first released as a basic GUI for DOS, and this version is without doubt the worst ever.

 

Buddha

Buddah: Re your 7/21:

I, too, am an unfortunate Vista user and I can second your comments.

Not only Harpoon, but other usually dependable programs that ran fine on my XP machine have the same problem with the White Screen of Annoyance.

Buddah: Re your 7/21:

I, too, am an unfortunate Vista user and I can second your comments.

Not only Harpoon, but other usually dependable programs that ran fine on my XP machine have the same problem with the White Screen of Annoyance.

 

Not only do I have this problem with Harpoon and various other things sold by third parties, it periodically occurs with Vista's own components such as Explorer and Windows Mail. A lot of the MS apologists in the Vista NGs try to blame everything on other vendors not making versions that are Vista compatible, but if Vista can't even run its own components reliably, I'd say it's definitely a Vista problem. I curse the day I bought this new system with Vista instead of insisting one XP.

 

That's why I periodically add the fact that I'm running Vista to my posts here, because what I see as a Harpoon problem is just as likely caused by this miserable OS.

 

Buddha

I can't say as I know why, but the "Not Responding" problem with high rates of time compression seems to have gone away with the latest release (2008.056).

 

Much appreciated,

 

Buddha