alt+tab sometimes (5-10% of the time) freezes the display in Windows XP.

General Discussions
#1

My game can alt+tab from the main menu without problem but when I alt+tab from the game with all threads running then in like 5-10% of the times I do alt+tab it freezes the display on my windows XP and I have to CTRL+ALT+DELETE to kill the java process.

The bug only happens when I run game in full screen mode and also it never happens when alt+tabbing back to the game always happens when I am alt tabbing out of the game to windows. Do I need to detect when windowdeactivated or windowstatechanged or whatever and switch to windowed mode before that alt+tab freezes the display or is that not possible?

Another different question which I have been asked from testers is why the game is not an application but a process as in when you CTRL+ALT+DELETE you do not see it as an application. This could not make any difference for this case or in general for any kind of issue anyway?

#2

Is this in plain Java2D?

Cas :slight_smile:

#3

Yes, a pure Swing application with NO openGL or anything.

#4

Almost certainly a driver issue of some sort.

Cas :slight_smile:

#5

I heard other ppl also had the same problem. So is it a bad driver for the graphic card or for the display and is there no way for me to work around it?

If it is correct what you are saying then I should thank you very much because else I would probably spend alot of time (which I already have) bumping my head against a wall if I think it is the Java code fault.

So, is there no way to see that alt+tab coming and quickly set the full screen off before the alt+tab comes into effect (also tried it but never go it to work)?

#6

Alt tab is unfortunately handled by the OS, and just on top of that, the native AWT code - I don’t think there’s any easy way around it.
Just out of interest - does it happen with any LWJGL apps? (Say, Titan Attacks for example). That’d pretty much make it a dead cert for being dicky drivers.

Cas :slight_smile:

#7

What java version are you using? There were a bunch of full-screen-related improvements
in Java 6. See if you can reproduce the issue on Java 6.

Also, what video board do you have, and on what OS?

Dmitri