Crash to desktop when going full screen
 

I'm posting this in the Chat section since it doesn't really have anything to do with UI's...but I was hoping someone here might know something.

Am I the only one crashing to desktop when attempting to go from windows mode to full screen? This has been happening from day one. I have no problems going from full screen to windows mode, but anytime I press Ctrl+Alt+Enter to return to full screen, I drop to desktop without any error message or anything. The same thing happens if I attempt to choose the full screen option in the Options menu. I've also had it happen just sitting at the character select screen and playing with the options there.

I believe my problem may be coming from the fact that I'm running the game on a Geforce 4400ti, which is a low end card for this game. I do have updated drivers and everything else on the computer is above recommended system for EQ2.

If anyone would have any ideas, I would love to hear them...see if I can get this fixed up. Thanks in advance.

It may be that you are using Ctrk+Alt+Enter I just use Alt+Enter and it works fine

Thanks for the suggestion UmbraNemo, but I just tested the Alt+Enter and still popped out to the desktop.

Ive been having the same problem since the last patch on thursday. Not sure whats causing it. It does it both with a mod ui and the standard ui.

Weird video problems happened to be from the first day I played. I would get static and lines across the screen. I added memory, defraged, did lots of things that did not work.

Then a friend recommended I use drive cleaner. It basically removes driver inforamtion for old drivers and fixed my problem (I wa on my 3rd video card and the old data had not been removed).

Anyway, if you want to try my solution, go to http://www.drivercleaner.net/

I to have had the same prob from day 1, kinda buggs me.

ATI 9600XT PRO
Latest drivers

ATI (all-in-wonder) radeon 9700 pro

Have had no problems since launch. I alt+enter, alt+tab out of the game all the time to browse the web, and then go back to full screen when I'm done. Did it a few times just last night. It's pretty much per-card that people are having problems...

So it is what I expected...the fact that I have a low end card. Thanks guys for all the info.

One other question (not on the same subject)...why is my signature picture only showing up on the first post and not the other ones in this thread?

Dolby has it set up that way for all sigs to save scolling and load times

sigs only show once per page

I had your same crashing to desktop problem shortly after my husband built me a new gaming machine. It was Windows XP, when I'd been using Windows 2000 prior. I didn't like the interface, so he showed me where to find WindowBlinds to find one I liked. As soon as I loaded that, EQ2 starting acting up on the Alt-Enter thing. I removed WindowBlinds and haven't had any problems since. You may try looking to see if you have a similar issue due to an unrelated program affecting standard Windows commands.

I'm using windowblinds right now and have had no crashes in eq2 related to it. If it has alot of Hard drive activity when you are switching to fullscreen it may be you need to adjust your MFT size or Page file size. Prolonged Hardrive activity can cause timeouts and drop you.

i have the same thing happening
 

my desktop is 3.2 extreme, 1gig memory, 6800 ultra video card
my laptop is 3.6, 1gig ddr2, 6800 ultra pciexpress

when i go to windowed mode or full screen on my desktop it does just fine, but when i do it on my laptop my game closes altogether....so i dont know what the deal is, my drivers are all up to date.

To resolve crashes like this, the SOE support DB recomends defragging your drive and disabeling all startup tasks since some may be attempting to share resources EQ2 expects to have eclusive rights to.

This did solve crashing issues on my XP box.

Once you've confirmed this resolves the crash issue, you can try reenabeling startup tasks in a process of elimination order to issolate which task is causing the problem and only leave that one disabled.

I only have this problem while running WindBlinds. :rolleyes:

This may just sound like a plug, but this may help.

Adventure Assistant will put EQ in to a fake full screen mode. Although this will not bring the performance benefits of real full screen mode, it looks exactly like real full screen mode, and will stop your crashes.

http://www.adventure-assistant.co.uk/

Hope this helps.

I used to have the problem of it crashing when returning to full screen from windowed, In my case it turned out the problem was that I was not playing the game in the same resolution as my desktop. As soon as I made my in screen resolution match what I had my desktop at the problem went away.

If you are running WindowBlinds as I do, this will happen everytime. But if you set an exemption under the per applications settings to not skin the following files you will have no problems anymore, or at least I dont.

EQ2.exe, Everquest2.exe (both in /sony/Everquest 2 folder) and Launchpad.exe in the launchpad folder.

Might not have to do all of them, but I did and it worked fine after that.

Aye I use WindowBlinds as well, and this got annoying. Finally got put up with it and looked on the official forums. Like the person above said, if you set an exception, it will not skin the window, therefore, not crashing when going back to fullscreen mode.

Did this, and haven't had a problem since.

Old thread but I just had to post a big THANK YOU!!! I just got a new computer and couldn't believe it was crashing when using ALT+ENTER. I use WindowsBlinds on all of my computers and the others don't do this so I never suspected it. This fixed my new computer immediately!

I am having the same problem, the worst thing is thatI cant even load the program most times. can someone post the step by step process to stop the skinnigs process to those files plz??? started after this latest update??
ty

Ok Just found the fix..... Don't have EQ2 running, then do the following.

Right click START, then EXPLORE, go to your folder where EQ2 is loaded, if you are using the default location it is =C/Program Files/Sony/EverQuest II...

Next find the EQ2Settings button/file. Its a blue icon/background/gold letters. It is similar to the shortcut icon on the desktop. Double-click this icon, it opens & has 2 tabs MAIN & SETTINGS, select the settings tab, UNCHECK THE FULLSCFREEN radio button, then close the window out. My apologies for the long post above. Hope this helps.. :nana:

Ok, it seems that the fix that I posted didn't work. After just dealing with NOT using the ALT+ENTER function for a while, I am frustrated again with the fact that I can't tab out of the game w/o crashing. Going back over the posts on this thread several people are discussing using windows blinds, not sure what it is or how it works. If anyone has any new ideas on fixing the ALT+ENTER problem please by all means post 'em.

Question: Im using stardock, so im guessing that is some type of windows blind. How do I set the exception?

Windows Blinds / WOW Desktop Theme
 

I had a friend who bought my old computer from me. I had just wiped it and setup a fresh copy of XP and made sure that my EQ2 worked perfectly on it as it has in the past. I then gave it to him and noticed when I tried to play EQ2 on his PC, it was doing what you describe - it was crashing to the desktop if I tried to return to full screen mode.

For him, we found it was due to the fact that he installed the WORLD OF WARCRAFT desktop theme, which changes the start menu and other things in Windows... It seems it was locking a DLL (dxd9.dll or something) and not playing friendly with EQ2. Once we changed his desktop theme to something else and got away from the WOW desktop theme, it worked fine. It also seems that the WOW DESKTOP THEME is based off an old WINDOWS BLINDS program, which turned out to be the culprit for us. If you are still seeing these crashes, try changing to a standard windows theme, or download a newer copy of WINDOWS BLINDS and find a similar WOW theme, don't use the stand alone WOW theme....and that should take care of it for you.