Using alt+tab sometimes "crashes" my programs

[dogepc]

So ever since I installed windows 10 this issue has been occuring time and time again, and it's been getting really frustrating lately, especially since I have no idea why its happening. So, sometimes when I alt+tab while ingame, (or maybe alt+tab with the windows key accidentely pressed? im not sure), instead of simply minimizing itself, the game seems to "crash" along with my browser (if it was open at the time), I say "crash", because while the game just completely disappears from my taskbar along with my browser, and I have no way to reopen it, I can still see it running just fine in the task manager. This is pretty confusing, and like I said - its gotten kinda frustrating lately, any help at all is greatly appreciately.

 

[Colif]

When a game runs in full-screen mode, it can gain exclusive access to your graphics hardware — this is known as running in “Exclusive Mode.” Windows won’t render your desktop in the background, which saves on hardware resources. This means you can squeeze the most gaming performance out of your graphics hardware by running the game in full-screen mode, and that’s why games run in full-screen mode by default.

Windows doesn’t just have to switch from one window to another when you press Alt+Tab. It has to minimize the game and start rendering the desktop again. When you switch back to the game, the game has to restore itself and take control away from Windows. For a variety of reasons — especially problems with the way some games are coded — the game may encounter a problem while doing this.

You can see this in action when you have a game running in full-screen, exclusive mode. If you Alt+Tab out of it, you can hover over the game’s taskbar icon or press Alt+Tab again. You won’t see a preview of the game’s display area like you would for other windows. The game running in full-screen exclusive mode doesn’t redirect its output through the desktop’s display manager, so the desktop display manager can’t display a preview.

http://www.howtogeek.com/181761/why-pc-games-struggle-with-alttab-and-how-to-fix-it/

Sounds like its crashing explorer and for some reason, explorer doesn't reload icon after it reopens. This might help: http://techubber.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/how-to-solve-windows-explorer-frequent-crash-windows10-alt-tab.html