My games are suddenly closing down on me unexpectedly while I’m playing on Windows 7.
My games are suddenly closing down on me unexpectedly while I’m playing on Windows 7.
I’ve been running into a frustrating problem lately where games keep minimizing unexpectedly, making them unplayable. It started with The Elder Scrolls Online, then Metro: Exodus, and now Deus Ex: Human Revolution is affected too. The only thing that seems to work is rebooting my computer, which takes almost ten minutes – it's incredibly inconvenient.
It’s strange because this doesn’t seem to affect all games; it just happens with certain titles. I haven’t made any hardware changes besides a new USB keyboard (a fairly basic gaming one), and I haven’t found anything in the manual or system settings that might be causing it. My Windows 7 Home Premium is up-to-date, and my display drivers are current.
I recently got an error message from Application Error – Event ID 1000 – showing DXHRDC.exe crashing. I also occasionally get a black screen related to the graphics driver (nvlddmkm stopped responding), which seems to cause framerate issues until I reboot. I’ve been running MSI Afterburner for minor overclocking, but haven't touched those settings in years.
I’m really stuck because it’s random and only impacts specific games. I can’t even access the game settings to switch between windowed and fullscreen because it immediately minimizes. It’s incredibly frustrating to have to reboot every time I want to play! Does anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this? Ideally, if it's the keyboard, I’d like to avoid returning it since I’m otherwise happy with it.
Here’s a rewritten version of the text, aiming for a more natural and fluid tone:
“This is incredibly frustrating. I’m stuck in a constant loop – I have to reboot my computer just to play The Elder Scrolls Online, and it keeps minimizing! It's taking ages to reboot, and it’s such an enormous hassle to constantly restart just to get into the game. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the long reboot times, it wouldn’t be so bad, but this constant restarting is a massive inconvenience. I don’t know what else to do.”
Okay, update 2:
I unplugged the keyboard, replugged it in and it still gave me the issue. However, while the game was minimized, I right-clicked on it in the taskbar, clicked on ESO.exe and now it seems to be working. However, switching back to fullscreen from borderless windowed screwed it up again and I had to re-launch once more. This doesn't make any sense.
I've been reading that the ForegroundLockTimeout registry key can be edited to possibly solve this issue. They said the value needs to be 0x30d40 but mine is 0x001ed818. Should I edit it to 0x30d40?
Errors connected with sudden stop of graphic drivers happened to me few times with older gtx (750) in newer Deus Ex on Win7. It was most likely due to too much graphical options (despite playing on low in FHD), but that doesn't look like the case here. Also - even with full aero, your 980 should handle it nicely - I'v noticed that some games simply force windows to go back to simple aero, when they do fullscreen.
Maybe graphical driver is the issue here? Have you tried to wipe existing drivers and install different number? Win 10 learned me in the hard way not to trust drivers update made by windows update or to simply install newest, because newest is always the best (plot twist - it often isn't).
I also assume, that taking so long to properly reboot is just because you had hdd? Try to defrag system files in boot mode (before system launches explorer.exe, starts using pagefile.sys etc, it always helped me for some time, back in the days when I had hdd as os drive).
Do you mean, have I uninstalled my current drivers and then reinstalled the newest ones? I haven't but that's because I usually just manually install my graphics drivers every so often. I don't always go with the utmost newest.
Hmm how do I defrag the system files in boot mode? I'm not familiar with how that works but I can give it a go in the near future. If it'd possibly help me extend the life of this drive just a little longer, then that's all good by me haha
I'm not entirely familiar either - I'm using perfectdisk12, but there's an option either from cmd or defrag applet. If you could search that on the internet, it won't hurt imo. Try that for instance, since I do not believe in prifomdefrag.
https://docs.microsoft.com/pl-pl/sysinte...pagedefrag
Basically - all we have to do, was to follow the damn train...eee...follow the damn instruction to defrag pagefile and hiberfil.sys.
I looked up PerfectDisk and see that it's paid, but it has a free trial. Should I just download the free trial and run that, then?
Is there any specific problem with Piriform's Defraggler?
Oh, so I should download PageDefrag and use it to try to fix the issue? I was reading it and it says that it runs after chkdsk... that takes a million years on my PC. Is it required for me to run chkdsk?
Speaking of speed, how long should such a defrag take? I'm guessing it would be far quicker than a full defrag since it's only defragging system files but I want to be sure as I don't want it to run on boot unless I know approximately how long it should take.
Here’s a rewritten version of the text, aiming for a more natural and fluid feel:
“This is incredibly frustrating. I’ve been trying to launch some of my fullscreen games, and they just minimize instantly – it’s completely blocking them. I'm worried because I have so many of these games, and now I can’t play them at all. I’m going to try updating the drivers, as I usually do, but I’m not holding out much hope. It’s really concerning; I don’t know what’s happening, and it feels like a huge waste of time and effort.”
Another update: I installed the latest drivers, clean install and everything, and I've had absolutely zero luck.
Please help, I'm pretty desperate at this point. I've already pretty much missed a once-a-year event that I wanted to take part in because of this issue and it's just really frustrating.
🙁
The game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, has been giving me fits. It keeps minimizing itself unexpectedly, which is incredibly frustrating. I’ve tried launching it in administrator mode, but it hasn't helped. Honestly, it’s baffling me – I’m completely stumped as to why this is happening. I’ve even attempted running the executable directly, hoping that would resolve the issue, but no luck. It’s just a random, frustrating glitch that keeps popping up and causing me immense stress. The game minimizes itself seemingly at random, and when I alt-tab to get back in, it immediately starts minimizing again. It's like a digital gremlin is messing with my system! I’m completely lost and desperately hoping someone can offer some advice or troubleshooting steps because this is seriously impacting my ability to enjoy the game – it’s driving me absolutely crazy. The whole situation feels incredibly illogical and stressful, and I just want to be able to play without this constant interruption.