Alt-Tab causes game to "freeze"

[bigjazzfan_]

alt tabbing out of the game make it "freeze," in the sense that whats on the screen dosen't change, but the games still running and fully controlable in the background.

i'm in fullscreen and cant switch to borderless bc, when i do, this same bug happens, and i can't confirm for the game to remain in borderless.

any help much appreciated

[Kitet]

You wrote what happens, which I ROUGHLY understand, but you didn't specify what you want to achieve. Do you need help with switching to borderless? Help making game 'unfreeze'? That I don't understand.

When you are in singleplayer, your game pauses when you tab-out. Nothing on the screen changes besides that one blue thing going left and right in the lower portion of the screen. Game is running in the sense that the process is still there and responding, but your character doesn't move and your ship doesn't fly, animals don't move. Of course game isn't controllable at all, since you alt-tabbed-out of it.

When you are in multiplayer AND other players are in your system, game runs normally when you tab-out. Your ship flies, pirates attack you, animals move, you can get hurt by weather, everything. You can't pause the game at all, even when you press ESC. Of course game isn't controllable because you alt-tabbed-out of it.

Some events happen despite all of the above. Storms come and go in both modes. Time of day passes and night comes. Refiners refine and settlement events' timer progresses, frigate missions progress, etc., etc. Moreover, it all happens even if you log out of the game. You can come back tomorrow and see all those things change - weather, time of day, mission status, and so on.

All of the above are normal behavior. In the light of that, specify what is it that you think is a bug you need help with.

[Idaho]

Navigate to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries\SETTINGS

open:
TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS file

check:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Data template="TkGraphicsSettings">
<Property name="Version" value="4" />
<Property name="FullScreen" value="true" />
<Property name="Borderless" value="false" />
<Property name="Monitor" value="0" />

merely change one from true to false, and the other from false to true. save the file.

[Steap]

I searched for a solution for years. I didn't want to use cheat engine, because changing memory could lead to a ban and even if it didn't, it never worked for me. Unfortunately, switching to borderless window doesn't work at all for me. "Windowed" doesn't work either. I really hate it while flying with my ship, to leave the game open until i arrived at a planet. This takes like 1 - 2 minutes and REALLY stacks up over time. I play this game since release (bought it three times) and have over 400 hours and like 20 hours are wasted with watching my ship how it flys to its destination. I would like to do things like browsing the internet, read mails, play browsergames (Shakes and Fidget as a example) and do so many other things. Let us atleast decide ourself in the options menu.

Originally posted by Kitet:

You wrote what happens, which I ROUGHLY understand, but you didn't specify what you want to achieve. Do you need help with switching to borderless? Help making game 'unfreeze'? That I don't understand.

When you are in singleplayer, your game pauses when you tab-out. Nothing on the screen changes besides that one blue thing going left and right in the lower portion of the screen. Game is running in the sense that the process is still there and responding, but your character doesn't move and your ship doesn't fly, animals don't move. Of course game isn't controllable at all, since you alt-tabbed-out of it.

When you are in multiplayer AND other players are in your system, game runs normally when you tab-out. Your ship flies, pirates attack you, animals move, you can get hurt by weather, everything. You can't pause the game at all, even when you press ESC. Of course game isn't controllable because you alt-tabbed-out of it.

Some events happen despite all of the above. Storms come and go in both modes. Time of day passes and night comes. Refiners refine and settlement events' timer progresses, frigate missions progress, etc., etc. Moreover, it all happens even if you log out of the game. You can come back tomorrow and see all those things change - weather, time of day, mission status, and so on.

All of the above are normal behavior. In the light of that, specify what is it that you think is a bug you need help with.

I read something like this in every single thread that i found about that problem. And i still can't understand, why it is important for you to know what he tries to achieve. He already said, that he doesn't want the game to be frozen in background and this is all you need to know.

[Idaho]

When I had older hardware; an AMD FX8320 (from around 2011) and a gtx 1060 6gb, if i alt-tabbed, my NMS game often froze up or glitched out in some way.

Now that I have a mostly newer setup based on a ryzen 7 5800x, I never have an ounce of trouble alt-tabbing out of the game.

[user19990313]

Tentative fix, since I haven't encountered such bug before:
1. Update driver for graphic card blah blah
2. Turn off Steam overlay. If you have any other overlays, like Discord, GOG, or even dictionary with screen translation function, anything that could inject and cover your game window, turn it off.
3. This may sound weird, but it does happen sometimes: Razor Chroma software is known to cause various issues for all kinds of games, so turn it off if your keyboard is reeking green light...

Edit: also check your hardware, I found this "solution" after some searching...

edit: nope, it was using 1 single power cable instead of 2 for my graphics card (5700xt)

[Kitet]

Originally posted by Steap:

And i still can't understand, why it is important for you to know what he tries to achieve.

In order for me to provide accurate answer, if any. Understanding problem is the first step. Please understand at least this.

Originally posted by Steap:

He already said, that he doesn't want the game to be frozen in background and this is all you need to know.

That's what you interpreted. OP didn't say that. He stated what happens and what he cannot do. Op says something about a BUG, while all he mentions is normal behavior. His grammar is worse than mine and I won't be guessing.

Stop getting upset about others trying to help. If I can't help in the end, I won't say anything, but at least OP might come more clear. As you see above one other person says something about editing settings file, so they also didn't think the problem is what YOU interpreted.

[tkwoods]

There are so many things that can cause this that are completely outside the game itself.

Windows can be set up for game mode, power schemes, background tasks... The list goes on. Does the system get confused between gpu and onboard graphics? Don't know, we don't have enough data to correctly process this.

But anyway, alt tab is windows and in windows lies the fix.

[bigjazzfan_]

Originally posted by Farmer JJ:

Navigate to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries\SETTINGS

open:
TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS file

check:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Data template="TkGraphicsSettings">
<Property name="Version" value="4" />
<Property name="FullScreen" value="true" />
<Property name="Borderless" value="false" />
<Property name="Monitor" value="0" />

merely change one from true to false, and the other from false to true. save the file.

gave this a shot, whenever i get the game launched under just borderless being true, it launches to a black screen, expect for one time, where i'd set both to false so it was bordered, launched, toggled in game to borderless (it did the same freezing the screen while running in the background thing), alt-f4'd, and opened it again. but that worked exactly once and hasnt worked again since.

and yes, for the folks in the chat, my goal is to be able to play no mans sky. the reason i need to be able to alt tab is that i play my own music with the game, and need to be able to, like, change songs and such. if it helps, ive never gotten another bug like this in any other game.

[Kitet]

Please tell us what is your graphics hardware and if you have like 2 of them (e.g. a laptop with intel built-in and additional ati or nvidia). I have a laptop with additional nvidia so I might be able to test it. Of course I've never had problems with alt-tabbing from windowed-borderless in desktop PCs, both intel cpu + ati gfx and intel cpu + nvidia gfx. I had problems with fullscreen mode, namely I would tab-back to the game and it would have 5fps from that point on.

[Idaho]

I play in fullscreen and 'rarely' have an issue 'tabbing' out. I don't technically alt-tab, I hit the windows key and it drops me to desktop, but the game keeps running and 99% of the time when I re-enter the game, it's perfectly fine.

[bigjazzfan_]

Originally posted by Kitet:

Please tell us what is your graphics hardware and if you have like 2 of them (e.g. a laptop with intel built-in and additional ati or nvidia). I have a laptop with additional nvidia so I might be able to test it. Of course I've never had problems with alt-tabbing from windowed-borderless in desktop PCs, both intel cpu + ati gfx and intel cpu + nvidia gfx. I had problems with fullscreen mode, namely I would tab-back to the game and it would have 5fps from that point on.

im running desktop with a 2070 super, i7 10th gen, 32gb ram, and running the game off my ssd. in the one instance i got the game running in borderless, it worked fine, but now it just launches to a black screen when i manage to finagle my way into it

[tkwoods]

Originally posted by likeleaves_:

Originally posted by Kitet:

Please tell us what is your graphics hardware and if you have like 2 of them (e.g. a laptop with intel built-in and additional ati or nvidia). I have a laptop with additional nvidia so I might be able to test it. Of course I've never had problems with alt-tabbing from windowed-borderless in desktop PCs, both intel cpu + ati gfx and intel cpu + nvidia gfx. I had problems with fullscreen mode, namely I would tab-back to the game and it would have 5fps from that point on.

im running desktop with a 2070 super, i7 10th gen, 32gb ram, and running the game off my ssd. in the one instance i got the game running in borderless, it worked fine, but now it just launches to a black screen when i manage to finagle my way into it

Again, it's windows not the game. Until you look the correct direction you will not solve anything. Also the I7 10th gen comes in a lot of variations. I have an I7 4770K runs well.

I have however removed a bunch of windows bloatware and set a performance profile for better game play.

[Steap]

Originally posted by Kitet:

Originally posted by Steap:

And i still can't understand, why it is important for you to know what he tries to achieve.

In order for me to provide accurate answer, if any. Understanding problem is the first step. Please understand at least this.

Originally posted by Steap:

He already said, that he doesn't want the game to be frozen in background and this is all you need to know.

That's what you interpreted. OP didn't say that. He stated what happens and what he cannot do. Op says something about a BUG, while all he mentions is normal behavior. His grammar is worse than mine and I won't be guessing.

Stop getting upset about others trying to help. If I can't help in the end, I won't say anything, but at least OP might come more clear. As you see above one other person says something about editing settings file, so they also didn't think the problem is what YOU interpreted.

Wow, relax. I wasn't upset, i think you interpreted my post wrong. I just assumed, that the op described the freezing itself as a bug, but he meant actually a bug where he still could control the game if it was in background.

I misunderstood the post, my bad. On my search for a fix for the freezing (not related to the controlable-in-background bug) i came across this post and while having my problem in mind, misinterpreted it, so it looked for me like a solid explaination.

I'll will create a new thread related to my problem. Im from germany, it happens sometimes that i don't understand sentences at first look.