Fail to reload after alt-tab

I discovered this morning that my anti-virus software automatic update forces an alt-tab. Upon clicking back into the game, I got nothing but a black screen after several minutes.

System specs:
Gateway laptop
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon Xpress 200 w/ 64MB
Windows XP Media Center

Game runs fine except for coming back from alt-tab.
3,132 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top
Select the option "Fullscreen" off. This will make your game run in a window which makes alt-tab work fine.
Reply #2 Top
Do you have sound with the black screen? After alt-tabbing I get a brief black screen with sound before the visuals come back. With my old system the wait was much longer. I think the kindest way to describe the Radeon Xpress 200 would be "antiquated", so that's almost certainly your problem.
Reply #3 Top
I get the same thing EVERY time AVG decides to update. If you don't wait until it's finished, it will alt-tab you back out AGAIN when it brings up the "Ok" window. So it's just better to wait until it's done.

My system is also pretty old and cobbled together, so it also sits at a black screen anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute before the game comes up again. Just wait it out and it will come back, eventually.
Reply #4 Top
Hum, I've got a similar issue, except it completely crashes my game to desktop when I'm alt tabbed.
Reply #5 Top
except it completely crashes my game to desktop when I'm alt tabbed.
End of quote


What version are you running? If it's the latest, please install 'SmartException' from the free stuff section in Stardock Central. Make sure that SE is running and start your game as normal. If the game crashes it will generate an exception report that can be emailed to [email protected].

Include in/attached to the email:
+ A description of what you were doing at the time.
+ How to reproduce the crash (if possible).
+ A zipped save (if applicable).
+ The appropriate debug.err file.




As to AVG, it shouldn't be doing that. They had a thing a week or two ago where it would open a browser during the update for a special deal they had on the non-free version, but it hasn't done that to me before or since. There may be a setting somewhere for it, though it's been a long while since I started using AVG myself so I don't recall.

Of course, the simple thing to do would be to just go into AVG's options and change the scheduled update time to some time when you're not normally playing games.