Alt-tab / Alt-enter issues

Discussion in 'Players Supporting Players' started by Mujahid, Jul 15, 2018.

  1. Mujahid New Member

    Hi folks,

    I just came back to the game after a multi-year absence, and I've discovered that one of the features I found invaluable no longer works: the ability to alt-tab out of the game to check web sites for info. Let me describe my experience so you know what I mean. There are two methods I used to use to accomplish this, and neither seem to work:

    Method 1: Hit alt-enter, then use Windows taskbar to start/switch to browser. Switch back, then hit alt-enter to get back into fullscreen mode.

    Method 2: Simply alt-tab out to an already-opened browser, then alt-tab back into game. I seem to recall I would also need to hit alt-enter to get back into fullscreen mode, but I could be wrong about that.

    Anyway, no matter which of the above methods I use, I get the same result: the EQ window goes black and becomes unresponsive. The only way back in is to forcefully kill the process and restart the game. By the way, the actual window title bar does *not* say "Not Responding". It just simply doesn't respond. I can still hear music and game sounds in the background.

    My in-game resolution is set to the same resolution as my desktop. There have been no hardware or driver changes (this is the same machine and hardware configuration I used to play on). I run no other background processes other than what is required by the OS. The only exception would be Chrome, which is the app I'm trying to switch to.

    The only major difference between then and now I can think of is that then I was on Windows 8.1 and now I'm on Windows 10.

    Any advice you could offer would be appreciated!
  2. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    This is an odd one. The alt-tab works fine for me to switch, then to go back to full screen, I use alt-O. Did you put DirectX 9.0C in your EQ2 folder? I believe you can get it and unpack it into the folder from EQ2U. Not sure that would help though.

    You can try looking in the main options, maybe there is something in there that is stopping you, I cannot remember having to do anything to make the alt-tab work though. Hopefully someone with more knowledge about this pops in and will know for sure.

    Welcome back to Norrath, have fun and enjoy the journey.
    Rosyposy likes this.
  3. Rosyposy Well-Known Member

    I alt-tab between EQ2 and my browser all the time... however, I play in windowed mode.
  4. Mujahid New Member

    I've tried both windowed and non-windowed modes, but no luck so far.
  5. Finora Well-Known Member

    It's never been a smooth transition in Eq2 from full screen to an open tab in a browser, however it should still work for you.

    I can confirm that hitting alt tab while in windowed mode works just fine on a win 10 machine. Likewise for alt enter for switching between windowed and full screen, so it's not likely to be purely a windows 10 problem.


    The only thing I can think of is to make sure you've got your drivers fully up to date and recheck the resolution. A quick google shows that there are other people out there having a similar issue, so you may want to look around to see if any of those found a solution.
    Zeddicious and Rosyposy like this.
  6. Zeddicious Well-Known Member

    just for the heck of it - in both modes, try the /browser command. Should open up the ingame web browser. What I'm curious to see is when you close the in game browser, does it leave a big black square in the middle of the screen where that browser window previously was. Also try different quality settings in EQ2. Start with the lowest (Extreme Performance) - and work your way up the ladder, alt-tabbing to see where it bombs out. Could be gpu shadows, particle effects / etc - with the Windows 10 gfx driver that choke up and cant render when tabbing.

    Either way - sounds like a graphics card driver issue. Couple of things you can try - Win10 might be using is own WDM (microsft) version of your video cards' driver. Try using the newest driver from the actual manufacturer of the card. If the newer driver doesn't work, then keep downgrading (using older drivers) until you find one thats happy with alt tabbing to chrome. If its on-board drivers (intel whatevers) - be sure you have the latest chipset driver as well as the proper gfx driver to go along with that.

    I can reproduce your exact issue by running in High Performance / Windowed mode - and then minimizing the EQ2 window, and then trying to maximize the window again. 93 percent of the time, the screen maximizes, but is completely black. Of course my vid card is definitely not some uber gamer card.. just..some random Nvidia GT or GTx something.. idk. I've long since added a 2nd monitor to the rig which makes tabbing out a moot point in windowed mode. I just slide the mouse over to monitor 2 and google up whatevs I need...or push play on the next episode of the Office while I try and craft combines in the Seeds of Vengeance TS line...... (cough)
    Rosyposy and Tekka like this.
  7. Svenone Well-Known Member

    I have an older Radeon video card that is no longer supported with the new drivers, and I can alt-tab and alt-enter just fine. However, when switching between full screen and windowed modes the screen does go black, but only for a second or two. Even when leaving the game in windowed mode so that I can easily two-box, switching between the characters is not an instant thing.
  8. Geroblue Well-Known Member

    Interesting as alt-tab to go out to my spreadsheet where I keep track of my characters is easy to get to in EQ.

    in EQ II, I have to be in windowed, not full screen, for the same thing to work.
  9. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    I play in windowed mode, and constantly alt-tab out to my browser, or my little Notepad txt file I keep open to make notes in regarding the game, gear I mean to get, etc.