Windows task bar appearing in game

[Bartholome Mitre]

Anyone had this too? While playing all of a sudden the Windows task will come up. Usually when I move the mouse to bottom right of the screen, or make my character look in that direction. It doesn't happen always, but once it happens it won't go away and my only solution so far has been to restart the game. It's pretty annoying when it happens during a fight.

Anyone has a solution for this?

[Eekhoorn]

Close the 'Windows Explorer' process while you are playing the game.

[opjose]

You cannot close the Windows Explorer process, as the operating system needs it and will re-launch it if terminated.

The task bar shows up for two reasons:

- Red Dead Redemption 2 does NOT run in full screen exclusive mode (this is directly from Rockstar).

- Some notification took the focus away from the game.

If you are using Windows 10 you can use the focus assist to turn off all notifications while playing.
You should also turn off any other overlays, including Steam Overlays and Nvidia Overlays as well.

[Eekhoorn]

Originally posted by opjose:

You cannot close the Windows Explorer process, as the operating system needs it and will re-launch it if terminated.

The task bar shows up for two reasons:

- Red Dead Redemption 2 does NOT run in full screen exclusive mode (this is directly from Rockstar).

- Some notification took the focus away from the game.

If you are using Windows 10 you can use the focus assist to turn off all notifications while playing.
You should also turn off any other overlays, including Steam Overlays and Nvidia Overlays as well.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/taskbar-pops-up-while-playing-a-game-in-fullscreen/c71080ad-3e86-48e0-a656-0336434b895f

[opjose]

Again no. Explorer is part of the operating system and is vital for it to operate.

That is why even if you manage to terminate the process it immediately restarts itself.

When the Explorer is not active you get no desktop nor any other services...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Explorer

[Prike]

Solution for now: when task bar appears, press on RDR2 icon with Right Mouse Button -> Close Window -> cancel exit from game.

[Bartholome Mitre]

I tired shutting down Windows Explorer before but that resulted in an utter mess. I'll give focus assist a try. Thank you guys!

[Tyrant]

I had this while i was in fullscreen display mode. In game, i went to settings and changed to windowed mode. When it asked me to revert to previous, I did, and it was fixed.

[Lex1k0n]

Explorer.exe is NOT vital to the windows OS. Killing the process WILL fix this issue, and won't harm your system in any way (I just did this to fix the issue). The process will NOT automatically restart, to get your start menu and icons back you have to restart the machine or from the task manager click run and type explorer.exe Don't listen to the naysayers on here, they're out of their depth.

[Pipsqueek]

or you can hide the taskbar

[Noxsa]

djeeezes guys, just pres ALT + TAB, and keep doing this till your select is back on the game and stop pressing. game will be in focus again and bar will be in background.

[euphoricglow]

Originally posted by opjose:

Again no. Explorer is part of the operating system and is vital for it to operate.

That is why even if you manage to terminate the process it immediately restarts itself.

When the Explorer is not active you get no desktop nor any other services...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Explorer

no it tells youi to restart it not shut it off, also it does not automatically restart unlkess you click restart task

[Stick]

Like Noxsa says, hold ALT and repeatedly press TAB to cycle through open applications. Stop on SIM which puts it in focus. If the task bar is showing in SIM, hit ESCAPE and mouse up to the top right corner and click the Full Screen/Minimize next to the X (close). If it is still showing, check the game settings to see if it is Full Screen, or Windowed. I prefer the latter because I use other apps while ATS. I only have one monitor right now. Normally I would run everything else on other monitors.

[opjose]

Originally posted by euphoricglow:

no it tells youi to restart it not shut it off, also it does not automatically restart unlkess you click restart task

No. Explorer is restarted automatically. If it cannot restart windows will hang up.
The issue is not with Explorer.