Windowed mode refusing to work

[shivscience97]

The title says it all, the windowed mode of the game is refusing to work.

To give some background, I'm playing the 2.2.7 Le Guin version of the game. The game was stuttering really bad, so I tried to set the game to windowed mode by going to the in-game settings (not in the Paradox launcher). I made the change, after which a prompt asks me to restart the game to apply the changes.

Unfortunately in my case, the game stutters so badly that I can't really make a clean exit. If I try to leave by pressing the exit button, the game simply hangs, and I have to close it with the Task Manager.

When I restart the game, ta-da! No windowed mode, still fullscreen. Funnily enough, when I go to the in-game settings, it's telling me the game is currently running in the windowed mode. The same is reflected in the Paradox launcher. No change even when I make the change throghh the launcher.

Any suggestions anyone? I really want to play Stellaris, but the stuttering is terrible, and windowed mode seems to be the only viable solution.

UPDATE: Switched to 1.9.1 version. Same issue is occuring.