Vista issue running a game in a window

The Game Room
1

I recently did a full system upgrade. I often like to play certain turn-based games where I can surf the net while the AI does their turns in the background. In the past I would merely have to toggle on “windowed” mode, and the game would keep running in the background while I did whatever in Firefox (like blather on here). But now all my TBS games automatically freeze the instant I alt-tab off of the window to go do something else, and it’s just bugging me. I am sure there’s a toggle for this somewhere in a sub-sub-sub Vista menu, but I’d have no idea where to start looking for it.

System specs:

Vista 64 bit
Intel Core i7 CPU
GeForce GTX 260
4 megs RAM

2

Have you tried leaving the game in full-screen mode? I think putting a game in windowed mode causes it to use a lot more memory, which might be slowing things down.

I do this all the time with Civ4, leaving it in full-screen mode but alt-tabbing out to do other things during the AIs’ turns, and the game chugs away just fine. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any problems with this when I was running Vista, but it’s been more than a year since I upgraded to Windows 7, so I can’t remember for certain. Oh, and my system specs are about the same as yours.

You might consider upgrading to Windows 7. I’m not one who had any problems with Vista, but Windows 7 does run smoother, and is definitely snappier. I can’t say if this would help with your problem, though.

3

Nope, it freezes when I exit it in full-screen too-and I assumed that in that case it should freeze by default, which is precisely why I was trying to run it in a window-at least that is how my system worked before the upgrade (as in, when returning to the game, it is still in exactly the same state it was when I alt-tabbed out). <confused>

4

What games are you playing? Many games have an option for “Pause when the game window loses focus” or something like that. Sometimes hidden in an .ini or .xml file somewhere in their directory or in a directory they create in the username/game name or username/my documents/game name or username/my documents/games/game name. Or something along those lines.

At any rate I don’t think this would be a Windows issue so much as the specific application’s issues. I’d true googling around for something like:
“game name” pause when lose focus

This shouldn’t be the case at all.