Alt-Tab freezes game

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hello. I was playing Gal Civ 2 and I got an IM message in Windows. Gal Civ 2 automatically got minimized and I went back to windows to see the message. When I clicked back on the application to bring it back up it goes to a black screen with the cursor. I can Alt-Tab between programs running and so on. The only way to get out is force quit Gal Civ 2 and start it up again. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks.
14,997 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm not sure if there is a fix. Maybe check that your drivers are up to date. You could post your debug.err info too.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, general alt-tabbing works fine for me without any tweaking.

However, have you tried windowed mode? That may be of some help to you. In general gaming, that often helps solve my alt-tabbing problems, though not all games support it, GalCiv2 does.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i've had this happen too, but... how long have you waited? sometimes when it minimizes after i've been playing for awhile and everything is pretty warm i get that black screen with the cursor, and it just takes awhile for it to kick back in.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Due to some memory saving tricks they use, when you alt tab it will take a long time to get the game back up

The black screen with coursor is normal, just wait. Depending on your PC, it could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The same thing happens to me as to the original poster. About half the time I get the usual black screen, wait 15 seconds and it'll reappear. However, the other half I end up with a black screen that never comes back (at least in the 3 or so minutes that is the limit of my patience) and I have to alt-tab back out, pull up the task manager and kill it. Graphics drivers are up to date and I've updated some other drivers as well (though I suppose its possible I missed one or two and they're causing problems).
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Was also going to sugest windowed mode; it will still use your whole screen (if your windows resolution is set at the same as your game resolution), and alt-tabbing becomes very fast and easy.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Depending on your computer's memory and memory speed, and the map you play on, reloading all the texture nodes can take a long while. Sometimes up to minutes on my pc.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ok thanks. I will try the window mode and see if that makes a difference. It seems odd that because of memory management it would take a long time though. Other programs are very easy to switch between. I suppose there is a lot of information to save in RAM especially on the larger maps. Would there be a way to increase the amount of RAM available to the program if that was what was slowing it down? Thanks.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The only way to increase your RAM is to buy more and add it to your machine. You can increase the size of your paging file (virtual memory), though I'm not sure that it will reduce the ALT-TAB load times.