[CP5670]

I have been encountering an irritating problem for the last four months, where I can't minimize (alt-tab) FSO and bring it back up. It actually minimizes fine, but if I try to maximize it, I get an immediate BSOD and a subsequent auto-reboot. This occurs in all builds as far as I can tell, at least from the last seven or eight months.

This is rather annoying since I used to be able to have FSO and FRED2 open simultaneously and switch between them quickly, which allowed me to fix bugs in my missions as soon as I encountered them in the game, but I haven't been able to do that ever since I changed video cards in December.

I wanted to see if anyone else is getting this problem, especially people with Geforce 7 series cards. This is dependent on what video card you have and possibly also which drivers are being used, so post your video card and driver version(s), and whether or not FSO allows you to minimize it and bring it back up. Try it a couple of times just to be sure, since the maximizing does occasionally work for me (maybe one out of five times). This has been my experience:

6800 GT / most major revisions up to 77.13: works
32-bit Mobility 9000 / unlabeled Dell OEM drivers: works
two 7800 GTs / all major revisions from 77.13 to 84.20: crashes (also occurs with a single card)

I ordered a 7900 GTX recently and will update this when I receive it, but I am expecting to get the same crashes. (couldn't pass up the sub-$400 price, but if I had realized earlier that this had something to do with the video cards, I would have stayed away from it)

This is with the windows version, by the way. Interestingly, this problem is also present in D2X-XL (Descent 2 equivalent of FSO), which I believe shares some code with FS2. It does not occur in any other game I have, however.

[Descenter]

I have sort-of the same problem with my GF 5700 card, except for the BSOD and reboot.  Instead it only crashes the game.  Though I do think it is only memory related, considering I have only 512MB of Ram.

[phreak]

D3D or OGL?

You can also try using '-window' command line to run in a window.

[CP5670]

OGL. I haven't tried it on D3D.

I'll give the window command a try. Although who wants to play in a window?

[StratComm]

Anyone who doesn't like surrendering their desktop to the randomness that is Windows alt-tab? 

Seriously though, alt-tab never worked particularly well even when it did work.  FS uses too much ram to take paging out kindly.

[CP5670]

I never had any problems with it before, and I only had 1GB of memory back then.

Come on, I know a few other people here have GF7 cards; would appreciate some input from you guys.

[taylor]

I have updated code for OpenGL which affects ALT-TAB in several ways (allows proper fullscreen/window flipping and active/non-active WM events).  It may fix this issue, but the code isn't ready for CVS yet.  So for now I guess the options are: run in a window, wait for the new code, wait until someone other than me takes a look at the issue, don't ALT-TAB. 

[StratComm]

It actually doesn't matter how much memory you have; Windows tries to page out a process when it is minimized.  That means that if the process uses a ton of RAM and isn't being actively run (FS defaults to pause when alt-tabbed from) then the system tries to recover as much physical memory as it can.  Thus massive paging and potential lag when you bring it back up.  More memory may actually make this worse because you've got to clear even more physical memory to disk.  Shouldn't cause a crash in any instance (so that's something else) but that's why I say that alt-tab has never worked well.

[CP5670]

I have updated code for OpenGL which affects ALT-TAB in several ways (allows proper fullscreen/window flipping and active/non-active WM events). It may fix this issue, but the code isn't ready for CVS yet. So for now I guess the options are: run in a window, wait for the new code, wait until someone other than me takes a look at the issue, don't ALT-TAB.

That sounds great, just wanted to make sure you are aware of the problem. I'll just stay away from alt-tab until this is added in.

It actually doesn't matter how much memory you have; Windows tries to page out a process when it is minimized.  That means that if the process uses a ton of RAM and isn't being actively run (FS defaults to pause when alt-tabbed from) then the system tries to recover as much physical memory as it can.  Thus massive paging and potential lag when you bring it back up.  More memory may actually make this worse because you've got to clear even more physical memory to disk.  Shouldn't cause a crash in any instance (so that's something else) but that's why I say that alt-tab has never worked well.

I think I know what you're referring to, but the paging generally only lasted for a second or two when I brought it back up (when it used to work). I guess since D2X-XL also has the problem, there may be some low level code common to both games that has some obscure incompatibility with the GF7 cards.

[taylor]

I guess since D2X-XL also has the problem, there may be some low level code common to both games that has some obscure incompatibility with the GF7 cards.

Several people have come to me with an ATI issue just like this so I've known it could be a problem for a while.  This is the first time I've heard of it with an NVIDIA card though.  I don't know that it's the same issue, but I know that our code for this type of thing just isn't nearly good enough.  Some cleanup of old code and some new code should take care of the issues but we'll just have to find that out when that code is ready for use.  I don't know that it will fix the crashing, but it will certainly be a step (or a few) in the right direction.

[CP5670]

Just an update on this, I tried out FSO on a new computer setup (fairly similar to the old one except for the video card, an x1900xtx; I cancelled my 7900 order) and the problem is gone. I think that pretty much confirms it has something to do with the Geforce 7 cards.

It's great news for me, since it means I can now debug my missions about twice as fast.

[ARSPR]

More info if it can be usefull somehow.

I have an AGP 7800 GS card. When I press alt-tab, I get the tipical task selection window in the center of the screen. I can select any other running program but the screen is still fixed in FS2. The game goes to pause and it doesn't crash but I can't don anything as all I see is FS2, no matter which program I select. I can return to FS2 then press ESC and continue playing.