Guild Wars 2

This has happened on my old PC and it is happening with my new PC as well and I’m really fed up with this crap. Sometimes, under unknown conditions other than the game being in fullscreen mode, when tabbing back in the game or launching a second instance of the game, the game will glitch and prevent me from interacting with ANYTHING outside the game. I cannot tab out, I cannot Alt-F4, I cannot launch the task manager. The only thing I can do is hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete to go to the log on screen to force the focus out of the game then launch the task manager from there. Then once back to the desktop after doing that, UI controls respond to hovers, but I only get ONE click, because anything clicked is caught by the game and puts the game back into focus (the cursor switches back to the GW2 cursor while still being on the desktop and nothing can be interacted with past that). On Win 7 in the last days of using my former PC, the only way I could get out of this was to log out of my session from the logon screen to force the game to be exited by the system and hope I had something unsaved somewhere so not everything would be closed. On Windows 10, I can right click the Start button and launch PowerShell, after which the game steals the focus. But since I’m still on the desktop, I can tab back to PowerShell and do ps and kill the process.

I’m really fed up with that crap. It happens several times a week and I really thought that I’d be done with it on the new computer because I thought that maybe the issue was with my old video card, but apparently not. The issue is definitely with the game.

Are you using any overlay software? I used to have this happen frequently when using Overwolf, and hasn’t happened since I stopped using it.

Stitch.1794:

Are you using any overlay software? I used to have this happen frequently when using Overwolf, and hasn’t happened since I stopped using it.

I was using it before, but I have not installed it on this brand new computer.

Sorry that your new computer isn’t any happier with the game than the old one was.
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https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

Create a support ticket at the above link and work with Customer Service to troubleshoot the issue. It isn’t affecting most people, so they will ask you to collect some diagnostic info.

Whether the problem is with the game or something on your end (even with a new computer), it will take some time to figure it out.

Good luck and please let us know what you find out.

Would suggest “windowed fullscreen” instead of just fullscreen. Antivirus can cause issues (specifically ones that act like comodo does, asking you if you want to allow applications to run) as well. Something is more unique to your situation to cause this. It could be as simple, like stated the antivirus you use, or some other software you use. Overlay software can also cause issues in some cases as other poster stated.

One thing that raised a question, is how are you launching another instance of gw2? Not that it’s hard to do so, but if you open gw2, and then attempt to launch another, it will detect it’s already running and switch you back to currently running one because of a mutex. It could be what you are using to do this, or something else you are running with gw2 at fault as well… Look at all the things that are in common between now and before, and do as suggested and contact support

Unless they changed something with W10, non-fullscreen results in an FPS loss because your desktop is still rendered. This is why I use real fullscreen.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

One thing that raised a question, is how are you launching another instance of gw2?

I use the -shareArchive switch and close the mutex with Process Explorer. I’ve had this issue waaaaay before I started doing this. This has been going on for well over a year.

TBH, you should just run in windowed fullscreen. Many games that are run in fulscreen modes don’t behave when you alt-tab in and out of them multiple times. My assumption is that windows tries to suspend the program’s processes, which causes issues when you try resume. In windowed fullscreen, your processes continue to run uninterrupted when you alt-tab out.

Have you compared your FPS with and without windowed fullscreen? I’ve used it forever and for the convenience of running a browser for wiki/youtube, never found FPS loss to be unacceptable. Rendering 2 instances of GW2 will use more resources than the desktop.

win10 was having issues with fullscreen applications last I knew? Although not positive if that was the one pushed on consumers or if it was just a test version. I don’t use 10 and couldn’t if I wanted to , due to bandwidth limits a month.

It’s not just 10. All windows I’ve ever used (95, 98, XP, 7, 10) don’t like it when you alt-tab in and out of a fullscreen application too many times… games just happen to be one of the only program types that still have a true fullscreen mode, most other programs run in windowed modes, whether it is a fullscreen window or not (e.g. maximizing your video player).

Alt-tabbing once or twice is usually OK, but do it too many times, or too quickly, something will break.

onevstheworld.2419:

It’s not just 10. All windows I’ve ever used (95, 98, XP, 7, 10) don’t like it when you alt-tab in and out of a fullscreen application too many times… games just happen to be one of the only program types that still have a true fullscreen mode, most other programs run in windowed modes, whether it is a fullscreen window or not (e.g. maximizing your video player).

Alt-tabbing once or twice is usually OK, but do it too many times, or too quickly, something will break.

Yes but 10 had an inherent bug from my understanding that was more serious. 95/98 and the games then were immensely buggy doing that (and I liked 98). xp was far more tolerant and 7 personally I’ve had little issue with the OS, games not being coded properly on the other hand… I’ll admit I’ve had gw2 pretty much always in window, but I have done fullscreen, and know others that did fullscreen gw2 in win8 with no issue except when overwolf caused problems.