Alt-tab black screens

[sabre364]

Often, not always, when I alt tab out of civ 5 be it in game or on the menu screen (this is in game after i hit escape) and try to go back in I am faced with a black screen. The cursor still shows, the cows are still mooing and sometimes if i click around I can hear the mouse action working. But it is a black screen forcing me to restart. I have to try and remember to quicksave before every time I alt tab! Otherwise the game runs fine.

Quite annoying, here are some system specs. Some googling of this issue is making me try direct x 9 civ now for the first time instead of 10/11 which I normally go to. If it does work, what are downsides of dx9?

alienware m11x r2 i5
4 gig ram
nvidia gt 335m
w7 h premium
Runs flawless med-high settings all around. Have latest drivers.


Some notes from running in dx9 mode first time. Screen preview when alt tabbed into another window (ie. popup when mouse over V logo in taskbar) does not work, only black screen. Alt-tabbing during loading of game requires multiple attempts. Once I return to civ v during loading, I get a black screen for a while but then it jumps back to the loading screen. Alt-tabbing during gameplay, be it menu or in game, is rapid back and forth...however again screen preview doesnt work, also no transparency (see through taskbar whats going on in game - this is useful when waiting for load - i can surf the internet and see begin your journey button pop up when tis ready - of course this only happens when dx10/11 civ is working properly and not black screening me after alt tab)

 

[timtofly]

ALT-tab in game for me DirectX9 is a crap-shot. The game will not let the graphics through. I have not had any problem though going back to the game. When My game freeze/crashes, I cannot ALT-tab. If I CTRL-ALT-Del. The box pops up, but you cannot see it. You can just tell its there when you mouse over it, and the curser changes.

 

[Maniacal]

Alt-tabbing is notoriously unreliable with many programs/games. If it gives you problems discontinue use immediately or accept the risks. Unless there's a fix I'm completely unaware of.

Try using windowed mode if you must check some program, also Steam includes an in-game web browser (press tab+shift to bring up the ingame overlay and there's a "Web Browser" link near the bottom of the screen, it works really well now that they ditched IE and use a similar thing (don't remember the word) to Google Chrome).

 

[webtax]

got this . did anyone find a workaround/solution?

for me alt tab is an integral part of pc gaming so i cannot live without it specially in games like this

 

[timtofly]

Not really, the game is still having problems in releasing the GPU memory, which if not cleared correctly is more than likely the cause since the resources are frozen or unable to be re-displayed. It is getting better, but that depends on what else you are going to be running in the "background" and your available system resources. If a file gets corrupted there is not much you can do but re-boot and fix the corrupted file.

In windowed mode, you do give up the ability to "scroll" the interface, but everything else seems to function normally.

 

[PieceOfMind]

it works really well now that they ditched IE and use a similar thing (don't remember the word) to Google Chrome).

How long ago did they do that?