"Task Manager" impossible to use because of a crash?

Khatou · April 2020

Hello, can you explain to me why TESO manages to override the "Task Manager" when the game crashes?

At times, the game starts to "stop responding" (without knowing why) which sometimes brings me to a black game window, so my first idea is to go to the task manager to stop the TESO process, but there, I can't display this window first because the (black) game window prevents me.

Yet I can display all open items via a shortcut (ALT+ Tab) in Windows 10, but when I use it ESO always has the upper hand...

Why is that?

Ozium · April 2020

is TM set to always on top?

Khatou · April 2020

in this kind of case yes, especially since I have this problem that on TESO, him again...

Royaji · April 2020

ESO is by far not the only program which can prevent you from closing it through Task Manager in case of some crashes. I'm not sure if your question is better directed at ZOS or Microsoft themselves.

Ozium · April 2020

could start game in windowed mode then switch to FS if it's ok

Cathexis · April 2020

I used to have this problem, I used to ctrl-alt-delete into task manager and then manually select the game and end task with the arrow keys. That allowed me to bypass the crash lockout. If this is the same problem, it's related to graphics card stress, depending on the stress it will error normally, lock in a black screen, lock in a black screen and then completely crash, or crash the entire system, depending on the stress level.

I guessed that's why you can't access the task manager easily, because it's locked in a gpu crash. The other way is to force the GPU to crash completely, but I don't recommend that.