Stealing Focus - Vista and Alt-Tab part 2
Couple months ago I posted a thread asking if Alt-Tab was a safe thing under Vista, and it was determined that it isn't, based on how Vista handles Alt-Tab and invariably causes a UE and death.
What I've found is that, at least when running fullscreen, if anything steals focus from T2, be it a dialog box or, in my case, a printing status thing popping up, attempting to return to T2 causes a fatal UE no matter how I try to get back in (clicking taskbar, alt-tab, etc).
My wonder is if there is a way to give Tribes 2 "always on top" status, so that windows can't pop up and steal focus from it, and if setting something like that would prevent focus-stealing in the first place.
Of course, if there was a way to safely Alt-Tab without it crashing, that would be a better solution, of course.
[EDIT] Have included a check in my launcher code to grant Always on Top status to the Tribes window when it appears. Looks like it does the trick so far.
What I've found is that, at least when running fullscreen, if anything steals focus from T2, be it a dialog box or, in my case, a printing status thing popping up, attempting to return to T2 causes a fatal UE no matter how I try to get back in (clicking taskbar, alt-tab, etc).
My wonder is if there is a way to give Tribes 2 "always on top" status, so that windows can't pop up and steal focus from it, and if setting something like that would prevent focus-stealing in the first place.
Of course, if there was a way to safely Alt-Tab without it crashing, that would be a better solution, of course.
[EDIT] Have included a check in my launcher code to grant Always on Top status to the Tribes window when it appears. Looks like it does the trick so far.
Comments
Of course all these issues only occur in fullscreen mode, for me. Windowed mode alt-tabs flawlessly. Unfortunately I don't use it because I bought a 17" widescreen monitor for a reason, not to relegate the game to a small porthole in the middle.
On rare occasion I mistakenly hit the alt-tab combo (with different keystrokes to do different things I tend to have brain misfires) and am able to return to the game without a UE. Whether this is a case of alt-tabbing again before focus and control has been given to the desktop (or whatever was in line) or just plain luck for that instance, I dunno.
I have a pair of nVidia GeForce 280 GTX 1GB running Forceware 182.50 drivers in SLi on Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.
I don't think it's just Vista. I recall having that problem on my older computer that ran Windows XP. I believe.. SP 1.