video PORKED on ALT-TAB return...

[Gypsy Baron]

For some reason I can no longer ALT-TAB out of AH and
return. I wind up with a grey window, the blue bar at
 the top has "Aces High" showing and I hearsound in the
background. The grey screen is flikering/shimmering.

I can transmit and receive on VOX so I'm in the arena
but with no video...no cursor...nada.

I checked AHII and I can ALT-TAB just fine there.

What could have changed? I used to be able to
ALT-TAB in and out of AH with no problems.

[SKurj]

try playin at a different resolution to your desktop


SKurj

[Shane]

i bet you updated some vid drivers.


i had the plm of not being able ot alt tab out in AH2... updated, ah2 fine, couldn't alt tab in AH1, reverted back to the older drivers as AH2 alt tab isn't a priority right now for me.

[ChasR]

Don't mess with the drivers.  Do what Skurg says.  There is a very lengthy thread about this.  In the end, it was determined all you have to do is change the video settings of the game to a resolution different than the desktop.  After you do that, you may be able to change back to running the same resolutions again, as I could.
 ALT-TAB Thread

[Gypsy Baron]

Originally posted by Shane
i bet you updated some vid drivers.


i had the plm of not being able ot alt tab out in AH2... updated, ah2 fine, couldn't alt tab in AH1, reverted back to the older drivers as AH2 alt tab isn't a priority right now for me.

 Well, close but not quite...

 I started getting BSOD's in FS9 to the point that it
 became intolerable.

 Having had ATI cards in the past ( AIW Pro ) I am reluctant
 to mess with a working system...I will NOT play the "gotta
 have the latest drivers game"...

 What I did was unistall the ATI drivers that have been on
 this system since day 1...Cat 3.7 I believe...and then did
 a reinstall. I then reinstalled DirX9.0b .

 Never thought to check AH ALT-TAB functioning.

 The thing is I can ALT-TAB in and out of AHII just fine.
 One wouldn't think that the method of doing the ALT-TAB
 would be that different but obviously it is, so it is definately
 an AH related problem...i.e....it's not an ATI driver issue
 entirely.

 As stated above I will NOT go through the latest driver update
 thing and will NOT do the "purge registry off everything ATI"
 since that usually results in a non-functioning TV Tuner, and
 THAT I will not tolerate...so, as long as my TV tuner is working
 and FS9 runs OK I'll just have to live with the AH ALT-TAB
 malfunction. The downside is that this will impair my scenario
 activities since I won't be able to ALT-TAB out/in to change
 my VOX settings, etc without having to kill AH and restart it.

 I read the thread refeerenced in another reply here and tried
 the "different resolutions" for desktop/AH thing...kept DT at
 1024, up'ed AH to next highrer setting...still PORKED.

 Also changed the palletized texture thing...no go on that either.
 From reading that thread it seems like whatever causes this
 problem is really obscure and most likely is some registry
 entry that doesn't get changed except on Thursday, February
 29th if the sun is shining in Omaha, Nebraska....

 PUNT!

[ChasR]

Try changing both the desktop resolution and the game resolution.  The scientific method wasn't employed in comming up with the fix.  In my case I was running both @ 1280 x 1024 x 32bit. I changed the desktop resolution to 1280 x 960 and changed the game resolution to 1024 x 768.  ALT-TAB problem wet away.  Then, trying to duplicate the problem so I could methodically determine how to fix it, I set both resolutions back to 1280 x 1024 x 32bit.  The problem didn't recurr.  SKurg beleived the game resolution had to be higher than the desktop resolution to fix it.  He may be right as at one point I did set the game to 1600 x 1200 but didn't like it and changed to 1024 x 768.  
Since no amount of driver changing, purging or cursing worked for me, I think the problem lies in the AH settings folder.  If a porked file in this folder is causing the problem, renaming the folder should fix it.  AH will create a new settings folder on start up. Skuzzy may want to weigh in on which individual file could be deleted or tell me I'm totally wrong.  You probably don't want to lose your stick and view settings.  They can be copied back from the renamed folder.

[Gypsy Baron]

Originally posted by ChasR
Try changing both the desktop resolution and the game resolution.  The scientific method wasn't employed in comming up with the fix.  

-SNIP-
 

Thanks for the inputs everyone.

The problem has been eliminated...at least for now, it seems.

I changed my desktop resolution to 1152x864 from 1024x768
and AH res. to 1280x1024 from 1024x768 and was able to
ALT-TAB OK.

I then returned to my preffered settings of 1024x768 for
both desktop and AH and was still able to ALT-TAB as I
had in the past.

Although there is no explanation for this behavior, at least
now I have a method that works to resore the ALT-TAB....

   =GB=