Alt tabbing issue with games - MSI Hawk 6870

[pizzown]

When I play HoN and alt tab out of the game and then alt tab back into the game sometimes it just goes back in game perfectly while other timesthe screen is completely black but the cursor is still active and actually changes from the default windows cursor to the HoN cursor. I thought it may have been just HoN so I start up black ops. The problem with black ops was that it would not even let me get out of the game i tried alt-tabbing, smashing the windows key, and starting up the task manager. The only way for me to alt tab was to exit the game first.

My old 4850 never had this issue so I'm assuming its somehow related to the new video card and/or drivers. And I was just wondering what is going on if anyone has any advice? I am pretty sure I have the most up to date drivers and Catalyst so now I'm just confused

Mobo: Asus p6t deluxe
cpu: core i7 920
psu: antec 650w
gpu: msi hawk 6870

 

[mister g]

What OS do you have and how much RAM is installed?

 

[pizzown]

windows 7 64-bit
ocz gold 3x2gb 1600

 

[pizzown]

oh yeah and this has been happening with windows media player if i refresh a page in chrome or something. if i have windows media player open in the background playing something but just with chrome over it the frame of the windows media player pops out for a second, kind of annoying

 

[mister g]

Have you tried reinstalling Chrome? Before you had the 6870 did you uninstall the Catalyst drivers and then reinstall them once the 6870 was in? Also try reinstalling the games to rule out buggy game code as a potential culprit.

 

[pizzown]

Reinstalling chrome does not solve the weird windows media player issue but it does not occur with vlc so i'm just assuming its windows media player

i uninstalled catalyst and the associated drivers before i put in the 6870 and then installed the new ones. i just uninstalled all of the drivers again and reinstalled and the problems persist

reinstalling game did not fix it either :/

i have not seen anyone else have this issue so is it possibly the card? ie should i just rma it? or is there any other possible fixes out there?

 

[mister g]

Can you try taking out the graphics card and then putting it straight in again? By that I meant don't push it in one side first and then the other.

 

[pizzown]

The first time I put it in it was kind of a struggle, so I really thought that suggestion would work especially when this time it went in super easily and i heard a nice easy click. But still to no avail

edit: i also found out that if i run hon in windowed mode and play another game (black ops for instance) if i alt tab in and out of black ops and have hon in the background, hon will sometimes display the blackscreen problem as in the op which can be fixed by repeatedly alt tabbing in and out of the other game. so im starting to think that the windows media player problem and hon problem are not due to faulty cards but the programs themselves

 

[mister g]

Probably, media player for me refuses to stay in fullscreen mode. I plan to completely reformat and reinstall it when I have the time to. Maybe those games don't function right when DX11 and 64-bit mode is active. Try running them in compatability mode for say Windows 7 (it should automatically go into 32-bit mode). Also try downloading the latest DirectX files, http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=35

 

[pizzown]

I tabbed in and out many many times and it looked good until about the 40th one i got a blackscreen and then the frequency of them increased after that.

The directx you linked is for web players only, no? I do have DX11 though according to dxdiag.

I just checked the hon technical support forums and apparently a few other people are having the exact same issue as me, so its probably not gpu related I guess. Thanks a ton for the continuous help, too bad you arent getting paid for this huh?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i have never had any good experiences alt tabbing out of any game with any hardware i have ever owned, always have crashes, hangs etc. just dont alt tab, its bad.

 

[mister g]

Unless games have special code to reload resources (World in Conflict comes to mind) exiting a game generally isn't the best idea. As to the paid part it's experience that could be useful later, for example in tech support (though reading from a script would probably be company policy even if I know better). The DirectX link isn't just for web players it's a web update package that's supposed to update all the DirectX 9.0c components of the DirectX code, it was useful until late last year when Microsoft finally ended support for XP and by extension DX9. Since a lot of console ports still use DirectX 9 it's best to have all the core packages updated.

 

[pizzown]

Best answer selected by pizzown.

 

[mister g]

Thanks, I'm always here to try and help.