So...what just happened?

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unplanned bacon

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It started with me just wanting to take a screenshot of Tomb Raider because it looked amazing, but the screenshot just gave a black screen so I switch to windowed mode and print screen there. I go back to go to full screen and the game won't start and keeps crashing. So I try disabling exclusive fullscreen which works. Turn on the setting again and it crashes. So I go to try another game. I get sound, but no picture and then my graphics drivers crash and recover (which will no doubt be logged as a video hardware error when Windows catches up, just like what happened with my old 760). Eventually I reboot and everything is working including Tomb Raider with Exclusive Fullscreen, but, still no game obeys the print screen instruction and just gives a solid colour picture in the screenshot unless I use F12 to tell Steam to take the screenshot. My ALT+ Tabbing has also been a bit messed up the last few days too. It will switch program, but the menu that shows your open programs doesn't have that solid colour square behind it or tell you what you're going to change to.

There goes my rock solid reliability where I haven't been deliberately forcing a crash.

I'm pretty sure my rig is fine as mass failure on that level has never happened before (and it appears Tomb Raider was the trigger), but as a former console only gamer and first time builder I'd like to know what happened for my computer to suddenly forget how to game!? o_O

Oh, and why can't I do an in game Print Screen anymore. The only major changes have been 16 Windows Updates on Monday
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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Print Screen is supposed to be the correct screen capture button for Far Cry 3. Are you running any sort of utility or software other than the game itself that works with your graphics card? MSI Afterburner for example? It may be interfering with the in-game screen capture with it's own capture methods.

Have you updated your graphics drivers lately, or perhaps could you be running old drivers? Has Steam been updated lately? Maybe you found a bug?

Have you solved the problem you have when you Alt+Tab to other programs? This sounds like a problem that is outside of your games, but perhaps affecting them.

Have you tried rebooting?
 
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unplanned bacon

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Far Cry 3 used to respond to Print Screen, but not any more. Print Screen will either print screen my desktop or give a solid colour. I know Steam had a fairly recent update that changed its icon among other things. But the problem affects non-Steam and Uplay titles as well. The ALT + Tab thing happened when I had a game minimised.

I tried rebooting and several hours with Windows tech support, checked for data corruption. Cause is still unknown
My drivers are up to date
 
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unplanned bacon

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I assumed they did as I though every program within Windows supported it. The Sims 4 Demo was the first case of the ALT + Tab weirdness, but being a demo I didn't think much of it.
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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It used to be the case that most of the graphics resources were tied up once you full-screened a DirectX game. With Vista, that sorta changed, as Windows itself began using graphics resources through DirectX rendering of Aero. As a result of this, graphics cards were sorta forced into the boat of having to much better handle the sharing of resources. Windows 7 uses even more resources, and Windows 8 less, with the removal of a significant portion of the Aero glass bits that 7 introduced, and optimizations to code. With Windows 8, the graphics driver must now segregate off different processes that are using graphics resources, so that if one of these processes goes down, the rest are not forced to go down with it. It's a great feature, but it comes with the overhead of driver complexity.

I'm reasonably certain that most game studios will not guarantee their game to Alt+Tab reliably. While it hasn't been very much of an issue for many years, they have no significant need to validate and troubleshoot issues that come from task switching their game.

Also, all of these changes to the feature set graphics drivers have been made to support in the last 7 years haven't exactly made for the best driver releases each time.

My recommendation is try different drivers and make certain no other software can be interfacing to the drivers when you are attempting to take your screen shots.

Are you overclocking at all?

You might even go so far as to consider turning off any desktop effects in Windows, and see if this helps.
 
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unplanned bacon

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This graphics card is new (went from a 760 to a 780) which means the drivers have changed. I don't remember the 760 doing any weirdness as far as screenshots were concerned other than the Sims 4 demo which would always refuse to screenshot when full screened. So maybe, this is drivers
 
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unplanned bacon

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I rolled back my drivers and the very first screenshot worked, but was several seconds behind what it was supposed to be capturing. After that I had the solid colour problem, so I went back to the new drivers and the same happened again. First screenshot worked, all the rest didn't. When I play an emulated game full screen it works perfect
 
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unplanned bacon

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Thanks. Computer is determine to test me this weekend. Optical drive is clicking on boot. Poked around in the case while it was turning on and I'm pretty sure it's that. If it's the optical drive it's a bit of a pain because it can't be returned anymore whereas if it's the hard drives they're still under warranty
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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If you're able to poke around your case, you should be able to simply unplug your optical drive for a bit and be certain whether it's clicking or not.

I'd certainly much rather have a low-cost optical drive going out than a HDD with my data stored on it. Best to find out before you're unable to back things up, unless of course you're good with keeping backups of your personal data and don't mind downtime.
 
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unplanned bacon

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Since my last post I've done this and the noise wasn't there with it unplugged. A replacement should be with me soon (different seller) and this drive will be headed back to Germany where they may just decide to send me another replacement o_O leaving me one spare
 
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unplanned bacon

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Doesn't matter if my primary HDD goes down as everything on it's cloud saved and there's another HDD in the system ready to go (just needs a quick configure if I ever need to make it my primary again). Had a hunch six months ago that either my primary HDD or my optical drive would be the first to fail
 
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