Windows 10 & Alt-Tab issues

OldManJim · August 2015

Hi Folks,

I'd like to see if anybody else is having problems when alt-tabbing out of ESO? Last night, I had to alt-tab out to access Skype & every time Windows wouldn't respond to mouse clicks. It was so slow as to be unusable. I couldn't place or answer calls to my game group. This wasn't just with Skype, either. I couldn't adjust keyboard commands for my keyboard, use Outlook etc.

I'm not sure this is entirely an ESO issue as I've found some people having similar issues with some Steam games.

One thing I did do that seems to help a bit is to disable the game bar in the Xbox app. Problem is you have to go through a whole sign-in process to tell the program not to hijack my games. And you can't uninstall the Xbox app either.

I'd be interested to see if anybody else is having this problem & to see what solutions you came up with.

(I'm running a GTX770 with the latest Win10 drivers.)

Thanks,
Jim.

Crafty_Boy · August 2015

Since downloading Win 10, on any other game if I press the windows key (between Ctrl and Alt) my task bar appears, but whilst playing ESO it no longer works, so to get the task bar to appear I have to press Alt+Ctrl+Del. So frustrating.
Please can someone suggest an alternative.

Junipus · August 2015

OldManJim76 wrote: »

Hi Folks,

I'd like to see if anybody else is having problems when alt-tabbing out of ESO? Last night, I had to alt-tab out to access Skype & every time Windows wouldn't respond to mouse clicks. It was so slow as to be unusable. I couldn't place or answer calls to my game group. This wasn't just with Skype, either. I couldn't adjust keyboard commands for my keyboard, use Outlook etc.

I'm not sure this is entirely an ESO issue as I've found some people having similar issues with some Steam games.

One thing I did do that seems to help a bit is to disable the game bar in the Xbox app. Problem is you have to go through a whole sign-in process to tell the program not to hijack my games. And you can't uninstall the Xbox app either.

I'd be interested to see if anybody else is having this problem & to see what solutions you came up with.

(I'm running a GTX770 with the latest Win10 drivers.)

Thanks,
Jim.

You're not alone, when alt-tabbing with ESO it takes a while to do anything (moving rooms in mumble or opening new programs). I'm running 2xGTX770 in SLI with the Win 10 drivers however it's my CPU that's bottlenecking and causing the delays (i7-4790).

When in loading screen or the character select screen, no issues, however during gameplay even when standing still looking out to sea, there's definite issues.

Have no fix for it yet, but after scouring google it seems likely to be an nVidia issue which they may or may not be working on atm.

Darlgon · August 2015

Welcome to a new MicroHard product. Shipped with more bugs for more excitement, with less testing and fixing. Its why I normally wait for a ".1" version before upgrading any OS. Got burned too much by the upgrade from Win95 to Win 98, and every upgrade inbetween. Nothing like an entire bank with 200 users loosing access to tbier printers because MS didnt think they needed a couple drivers from Win95.

Emissary_Vex · August 2015

I'm having similar issues but I have no reason to believe it has anything to do with the game rather then Windows itself.

tyronebarreb17_ESO · August 2015

i had exactly this issue, it persisted after disabling the xbox 'game bar' what cured it was un-installing my nvidia drivers and re-installing them. my win 10 desktop now runs very smoothly with ESO minimised whilst im alt tabbed out of the game

Rohaus · August 2015

I uninstalled my nvidia drivers and then did a clean up of the registry and residual files... then reinstalled the latest Windows 10 drivers... nadda... no dice... I still have the ALT-TAB issue...

Calorath · August 2015

Windows 10 is incomplete at this time. I have clients in my day job that have loads of issues with normal software (not games, in other words) and our Microsoft rep is involved. Currently the best solution is to return to 7, or 8 if you like it.

ningauble_7b14_ESO · August 2015

Same issue here, seems to related to SLI, when I disabled SLI, the desktop was responsive as normal. I would chalk this up to a MS/Nvidia problem, but I have been unable to reproduce the problem with any other games.

robskij · August 2015

I also have this problem,
but a workaround is to just push the windows key instead of Alt-Tab, does not generate the unresponsiveness for me at least!

Ashtaris · August 2015

I also had the same issue and then switched the settings from "Fullscreen" to "Windowed Fullscreen". That made going back to the desktop much more usable. What it seems like when ESO was in Fullscreen it was sucking up every bit of GPU processing and not giving anything back to the desktop. When I was able to bring up the Task Manager and look at the CPU utilization, it didn't seem to be that high.

OldManJim · August 2015

Looks like pressing the Windows button works. I'll use this as a work-around for the time being.

However ESO is crashing at least once an hour for me. It's even crashing on the character select screen.

Hopefully the next update will help.

Etaniel · August 2015

Lots of weird bugs in Wondows 10 for me so far. When I run vlc on the line 1 output, so that we can have a music bot in TS, every time i alt tab from eso, vlc crashes

The Uninvited · August 2015

Ashtaris wrote: »

I also had the same issue and then switched the settings from "Fullscreen" to "Windowed Fullscreen". That made going back to the desktop much more usable. What it seems like when ESO was in Fullscreen it was sucking up every bit of GPU processing and not giving anything back to the desktop. When I was able to bring up the Task Manager and look at the CPU utilization, it didn't seem to be that high.

This solved it for me, thanks for the info!

LameoveR · August 2015

I'm playing in Full Window mode on DirectX 11 renderer.
No issues.

Freeman · August 2015

I'm having the same issue. Started yesterday =/

Enteum · August 2015

Ready to Necro the thread....

....It's not just ESO I can't Alt+Tab out of in Windows 10 (Just upgraded) I can't alt+tab out of any Elder Scrolls game. This is definitely windows. I want to check my OBS streaming and I can't as Windows 10 won't let me Alt + Tab out of games. Very annoying...this has me considering downgrading back to 7 already.

Has anyone found a fix without using Ctrl+Alt+Del?

kupacmac · August 2015

I have similar issues, but it's not every time, and it happens whether I use alt-tab or the windows key.

I also can't take screen shots. I get a message on my screen that it took the shot but no new screen shots appear in the folder. I even tried using Win+Alt+PrtScr and same effect.

kupacmac · August 2015

I just solved the screen shot problem I was having. When I installed Windows 10 it had me link my local computer account to my Microsoft account, and even though my account was a local admin on my PC, it didn't have rights to modify any files under my Documents. I manually added my Microsoft account to that folder (and all subfolders/files) with full control and now it could write the screen shot to the ESO directory.

What a pain.

Icy · October 2015

I too have been having the alt-tab problem with ESO/Win10. Thanks for this thread. I'm going to try some things tonight and then report back.

I might add I had none of these problems on Win8.1 on exactly the same hardware. There are no performance bottlenecks at all; I've been monitoring performance while switching to desktop.