Solved Minimizing on Vista

[Slammer]

I've been into computer gaming for years, and only recently (well, less than a year anyway) went from XP to Vista. Unfortunately, the majority of the games I play (mostly newer, modern games) will not come back up properly after being minimized on Vista (usually by pressing the Windows key, but I've also experimented with ctrl+shft+esc, alt+tab, or have just had some notification balloon pop up that forces the game to minimize, and they all have the same effect) then trying to go back into them by clicking on their rectangle in the Taskbar. On XP, I loved how I could easily minimize a game, do something quick, then go go back into it, but in Vista, this causes the game to freeze and stop responding with almost all of them. The only one I've noticed this doesn't happen with is Dawn of War. I don't know if this is maybe just a Video Card thing, or a Vista thing, or something else entirely but either way I'd love to know if anyone has a way of fixing this. Most games would come back up perfectly of XP. (Also, going with Comparability Mode for the game doesn't fix it haha) I'd appreciate any ideas.

 

[Slammer]

Nobody has anything?

 

[richc46]

Well Im not nobody cause I have something, if it works or not
windows key and d, mimimizes all screens.
Do it a second time and game should come back

 

[MrNeeds]

The reason it does this is because windows NT based operating systems don't actually have true multitasking, my experience of minimizing is sketchy, it tends to put games into a frozen state, it does it with videos being played on a browser, the audio will still play normal but the video is in a frozen state, this could be why you are having issues minimizing.

MrNeeds

 

[Slammer]

Darn. That's disappointing. But I'm glad to know it's not just something wrong with my computer! Thanks for the info. I figured it probably couldn't be fixed.

 

[Slammer]

Also, do you know why some games (such as Dawn of War) seem to work just fine after being minimized?

 

[MrNeeds]

Most of the games I own work fine after being minimized, but if I'm playing online or on a loading screen, the game crashes when I return to it, it's upto the developer to allow the frozen state to happen, obviously Dawn of war was made to do this :-)