Witcher 3 Minimizing to Desktop Fix?

[A Russian Bear]

So my witcher 3 sometimes (seemingly randomly) minimizes to desktop and prevents me from opening it back up. Additionally, the game's audio continues after being minimized, meaning that I don't think it has crashed. This problem bothered me for awhile until I made a connection between the Battle.net desktop app and the minimizing. Whenever I have the app open (not a game) and then I launch W3, it will minimize in the loading screen consistently. However, if I exit battle.net and then launch W3, everything works fine. I searched online and didn't see anyone else with this issue so maybe my findings will help someone else!

Comment below if you have any information you would like to add.

[Diesoon_Crestwalker]

I had this issue happen to me as well, suddenly. Never happened before. So I checked which programs are running and might grab the "attention". And found the culprit in my case - I had just installed a new SSD drive and this SSD drive management software (Samsung Magician in this case) was grabbing all attention and forced the game to minimized state. Closed the software and blam! No more issues.

So, one step would be to check your taskbar and see what programs are running there, did something new appear there lately or not? Try to close down all programs you do not need and then try again. It may help.

[searcheR]

So I had the same problem, in my case fixed by closing TeamViewer.

[Stone hatchet CEO]

Fk that ♥♥♥♥. Im my case its skype which is causing the problem. When I'm having a converstion with my wife I cant maximize the window. Just as I disconnect with skype still running I can maximize it again.

[Umroosh]

On slower PCs, restarting the computer first helps.
An in-game option that might help is Full Screen rather than Borderless Window.

[Mister Vertigo]

Second vote here for TeamViewer. I've had that program mess up games before, and once I closed it down I was able to Alt-Tab normally.

[miklkit]

I just started playing TW3 last night and today I turned on taskmanager and Afterburner to check loads and after some time it minimized. It was convenient as I then got to see how it was doing, and when I turned those apps off the game popped back up like nothing had happened.

So it seems to be background apps causing it.

BTW the AMD 8370 was running at around 30% loads while the AMD 290X was running at 100% constant with fps in the 55-75 range with everything on ultra except hairworks, which is off.

[Mr. Hat-and-Clogs]

I had this issue today too. I've recently installed the GOG client, but closing it didn't help, so it might not be that.

However I managed to fix it by setting the game to bordered window mode.
If the game was in fullscreen, it minimized itself after like 5 seconds constantly :/

[Ivar]

Look up the xbox controller app that causes this.

[mrmike_49]

I've had this problem a LOT during combat, it drops to desktop, click on the W3 icon, goes back to game which is paused on the Menu screen.
Looking at all the possible causes listed in this thread tells me it IS a W3 problem

[Shiro]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A Russian Bear:

So my witcher 3 sometimes (seemingly randomly) minimizes to desktop and prevents me from opening it back up. Additionally, the game's audio continues after being minimized, meaning that I don't think it has crashed. This problem bothered me for awhile until I made a connection between the Battle.net desktop app and the minimizing. Whenever I have the app open (not a game) and then I launch W3, it will minimize in the loading screen consistently. However, if I exit battle.net and then launch W3, everything works fine. I searched online and didn't see anyone else with this issue so maybe my findings will help someone else!

Comment below if you have any information you would like to add.

Is any of you running Teamviewer?
Closing it instantly solved the problem for me.

[miklkit]

I believe it is background apps causing this. I went into taskmanager with it running minimized and bumped up its priority and the problem disappeared.

[OneNot]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Shiro:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A Russian Bear:

So my witcher 3 sometimes (seemingly randomly) minimizes to desktop and prevents me from opening it back up. Additionally, the game's audio continues after being minimized, meaning that I don't think it has crashed. This problem bothered me for awhile until I made a connection between the Battle.net desktop app and the minimizing. Whenever I have the app open (not a game) and then I launch W3, it will minimize in the loading screen consistently. However, if I exit battle.net and then launch W3, everything works fine. I searched online and didn't see anyone else with this issue so maybe my findings will help someone else!

Comment below if you have any information you would like to add.

Is any of you running Teamviewer?
Closing it instantly solved the problem for me.

Thanks for reminding me about this!
Now that I think about it, TeamViewer has been the cause of many mysterious problems in many a game.

I already got it fixed though. Unlike some people in this thread, I had the game in exclusive fullscreen already and the opposite of the reported fix worked. That is to say I changed it to borderless and that fixed it.
I hadn't used borderless before because no matter how much I tried alt-tabbing or even Win+D it just stayed on top no matter what. Now that seems to be fixed too, for whatever reason...

Besides these problems another rather annoying one is that sometimes the cursor stays on screen after a menu and just won't go away unless I restart the game.

That and weird freezes, where the game seemingly freezes, but I can still hear the audio and can even interact with the game normally (judging from the sounds i can still make), but the screen just won't update. That too can only be fixed by restarting the game...

Aaaaand the random "more normal" crashes. (Though without any kind of error. As if I had pressed Alt+F4, not that that even works in this game.)


I don't really know why I'm telling all this. I guess I'm just venting at this point. XD

[MuBerGun]

Yes. closing the teamviewer solved my same problem too. thanks everyone

[Johnny 100 pesos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Shiro:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A Russian Bear:

So my witcher 3 sometimes (seemingly randomly) minimizes to desktop and prevents me from opening it back up. Additionally, the game's audio continues after being minimized, meaning that I don't think it has crashed. This problem bothered me for awhile until I made a connection between the Battle.net desktop app and the minimizing. Whenever I have the app open (not a game) and then I launch W3, it will minimize in the loading screen consistently. However, if I exit battle.net and then launch W3, everything works fine. I searched online and didn't see anyone else with this issue so maybe my findings will help someone else!

Comment below if you have any information you would like to add.

Is any of you running Teamviewer?
Closing it instantly solved the problem for me.

yes, teamviewer closing solved the problem for me too

[Rantakemisti]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Johnny 100 pesos:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Shiro:

Is any of you running Teamviewer?
Closing it instantly solved the problem for me.

yes, TeamViewer closing solved the problem for me too

Sorry for necroposting but I encountered this same problem with Steam version of Witcher 3 and closing Teamviewer solved the problem.