Vaguely familiar. This is sort of like when my video card broke. Not exactly though. Call firaxis support, and go to the Civ3 section, and then say it didn't answer your question (#something), which it won't have, and tell them what it says. When I called, the guy was really helpful, and found the problems. He actaully was also playing the Byzantines at the time.
One thing to try: go to Start >> Run. Enter in "msconfig" and hit okay. Go to "General" and then select "Selective Startup" now uncheck the last option ("Load startup group items"). I need to do this to use C3C at all, so I'm used to doing it. This will not load any (non-needed, ie not neccesary for the computer to run) programs when you start the computer, so if there is interferiance, this should stop it. That is what you do on Windows 98 to get the start items to not load. This might work, and might not. But, it can't hurt to try it.