Minimizing full screen programs problem to re-open

facefullz · 11 Feb 2012

Hello !

My problem :

When I'm minimizing a full screen video-game, I can't re-open it. This problem appear on all my video game but not with my Internet browser or other programs who are not full screen. I have not changed anything on my computer and this problem has appeared today. I tried ALT - TAB and it doesn't work too. Each time I'm minimizing my full screen game to check my desktop or something... I need to close completely et re-start it.

Thanks for help !

Chalky Emultion · 16 Feb 2012

this is happening on my old pc too.. on it I have a Pentium 4 Northwood @2.53 GHz, 2GB RAM DDR, a Sapphire HD 3450 AGP, an ASUS P4P8X and an old hard disk (+-40GB)...
when i minimize a full screen game, I'm unable to re-maximize it.. probably my hardware is too much slow to do this!

can you post your pc's specs please? :)

Gornot · 16 Feb 2012

It doesn't really matter what kind of specs you have, some games are simply not designed to be alt-tabbed to Desktop and back. There was a time when readme's included such information.

However, if you were able to do this earlier and started seeing problems recently, it may probably have something to do with the graphics drivers. Still, it's not recommended you do this with games in any case.

In Skyrim, for example, switching between the game and the desktop multiple times will simply shut the game down, no errors or crashes or anything.
The Saboteur needs a few seconds to reload certain textures before it runs smoothly again, while games like Bulletstorm (if I remember correctly) will simply not let you get back into the game at all. Just a few examples I've witnessed.