Game constantly reverting back to Windows desktop

[cynicnd]

Hello, I don't know if my game is crashing per se, but about every 5 minutes, my game stops and goes back to the desktop. All I have to do to start playing again is click on the icon in the task bar. It brings me to the pause menu. It's not a huge issue, just very annoying. I'm not sure if it is something with the game, or something with my Windows settings. I use Windows 10. Any help would be appreciated if anyone knows a fix for this.

[FlickGodNA]

A possible fix would be to disable the "Vertical Sync" option. This can be completed through the Options menu of the Fallout NV Default Launcher.

[talgaby]

Switch to windowed mode. It may be something stealing the focus. If anything, you have a better chance of seeing what it is.

[cheshirm]

type notifications in windows search area. then Focus assist. might want to turn off Focus assist at the top and under Automatic rules turn on "When I"m playing a game". or change settings/priorities to whatever you prefer.

[cynicnd]

Thanks for the suggestions. The vertical sync didn't work, unfortunately. I've played around with the focus assist, putting it on all different settings with no luck. The strange thing is, it's a relatively new problem. When it first started happening, I would just change something (literally anything) on the focus assist, and it would stop the problem for the duration of that particular time playing the game. That has stopped working in the last week or so. It's also just this game that I have the problem with. I'll probably try the windowed mode tonight to see if that does anything.

[cheshirm]

every 5 mins sure sounds like email or something similar. check how often email looks for new msgs. if its 5 mins, change to 10 and see if minimizes change to 10.

I have focus assist off and when Im playing a game on. nothing (so far) interupts my games. but I dont have your apps and your apps priorities.

[cynicnd]

Ok. I'll pay attention to that. The thing is, I don't keep my computer super connected in the sense that I don't have it set up to notify me with emails or anything like that. I really only get notifications for updates. I'm very curious what is causing this. It's honestly only this game that I have trouble with.

[cynicnd]

On the off chance anyone is curious, if I play the game directly through steam instead of using the desktop shortcut, it seems to fix the issue.

[God, owner of the Universe]

Just had this problem with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Closed/killed a lot of programs (e.g. webbrowser Chrome). In the end, killing Explorer itself (so, the task bar and all file windows) did the trick. Will try that the next time right away.

You can restart explorer like this: CTRL+SHIFT+ESC opens Task Manager. Its file menu has the function "Run New Task". Just type "explorer".

[talgaby]

That is not supposed to work on Win10 though, a background service/daemon should automatically reset explorer.exe a few seconds after it detects being shut down.