Alt-Tab takes ages

Jock · 20 Jul 2011 at 23:43

Not sure if this is ultimately hardware related or not but for a while i noticed in a certain game that somedays when i alt-tab it goes straight away and others it takes ages, the screens flicker a lot and eventually im back on my desktop. I thought it was something to do with the game so thought nothing more of it, but now ive started playing a few more games im noticing it with them too.

Again, some days its fine but mostly its not. I've also noticed the likes of 3d max which used to open almost instantly now takes some time. Any ideas what the reasons for something like that might be?

This was the computer i got if that helps at all:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=17581192

PermaBanned · 21 Jul 2011 at 01:07

Is this windows? Does it have a compositing manager... that you can actually use to manage anything?

Number_25 · 21 Jul 2011 at 01:13

Is your desktop and game resolution different?

mejobloggs · 21 Jul 2011 at 02:13

They don't happen to be hl2 based games do they? They're fairly notorious for screwing up with alt-tab

Jock · 21 Jul 2011 at 07:16

Its wondows 7, though not quite sure what you mean by compositing manager so i'm guessing i dont.

Resolutions are the same although i do use 2 monitors if that means anything, with the game being played on just the main one.

One of the games is portal 2, but the others are dawn of war 2 and world of tanks.

Thanks

Tekgun · 21 Jul 2011 at 09:30

Some game do this for me some don't, not sure why. ArmA2 will instantly alt-tab to desktop and back, TF2 takes a while if at all.

R-G · 21 Jul 2011 at 09:39

glad someone mentioned the hl2 games, I was thinking it was my end, but TF2 takes forever to ALT-TAB.

valkia · 21 Jul 2011 at 09:46

Mine did that until you make sure both resolutions are the same in game and desktop. Then its pretty speedy.

mejobloggs · 25 Jul 2011 at 01:18

valkia said:
Mine did that until you make sure both resolutions are the same in game and desktop. Then its pretty speedy.

Already have that

Not really sure why your game res would be different to desktop res these days with LCDs and native resolution but yeah...

These days not only does TF2 take ages if I alt-tab, it crashes as well.

I've heard a few people say the went from ATI to Nvidia and things alt-tabbed much better

But there's probably the same amount of people that say the other way around too

hybrid572 · 25 Jul 2011 at 06:34

Have you tried playing on maximised windowed mode? It takes a fair bashing on the FPS because it keeps all the processes running in the background, but alt-tabbing is instantaneous and your system should be able to cope.