BPM loses game focus on start after Win10 1803 update (also breaks streaming)

[G3na5ide]

ISSUE

Since the 1803 April 2018 Windows 10 Update using either Big Picture Mode + Steam Overlay or Big Picture Mode + Steam In-home Streaming causes most full-screen games to lose focus immediately after game starts up (in the case of streaming, this prevents the game streaming and often results
in crashes.)


SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS

Windows 10 Pro 1803 17134.48 (gamebar off)
Intel i5-4460, 16GB RAM, GTX960 2Gb, Asus Z97K
NVidia Driver 397.64 (earlier versions also tried)
GeForce Experience 3.13.1.30 (overlay off)
Steam clients beta (11th, 9th and 7th May) and stable


STEPS

• Update Windows 10 to the latest 1803 version
  
• Start steam in Big Picture Mode
  
• Make sure Steam Overlay is enabled
  
• Start one of the games listed below

or

• Update Windows 10 to the latest 1803 version
  
• Start steam
  
• From another Windows or Linux Steam machine, fire up steam BPM and attempt to stream any of the games listed below

RESULTS

Games loses focus within after game starts up (in the case of streaming, this prevents game streaming, normally resulting in black or white screens and disconnects, sometimes crashing.) Steam Big Picture blue background is displayed instead. Game can sometimes be resumed by ALT+TABing to the game.


EXPECTED

When game begins, game should retain focus. When streaming, game should then stream without losing focus or disconnecting or crashing.


MITIGATION ATTEMPTS

I've tried earlier versions of the NVidia driver. I've tried various versions of steam. I've tried turning steam overlay on and off (games below run fine if not streaming AND steam overlay is off.) I've tried running games in non-big-picture mode (when the host machine is NOT running big picture mode games run fine, including streaming.) I've tried turning Windows 10 gamemode off. I've tried turning NVidia GeForce Experience overlay off. For streaming clients, I've tried turning Steam overlay off on both host and client. I've tried both Linux and Windows as streaming clients. I've tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the games. I've tried resetting NVidia Control Panel game settings to defaults.


EXAMPLE GAMES THAT *DO* SUFFER FROM THIS PROBLEM

• Lego The Hobbit
  
• Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7
  
• Lego Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY
  
• Crazy Taxi
  
• Evo Explores
  
• Game of Thrones - Telltale
  
• Pinball FX2

EXAMPLE GAMES THAT *DON'T* SUFFER FROM THIS PROBLEM

• Tomb Raider (2013)
  
• Elite Dangerous
  
• Grid 2
  
• ibb & obb
  
• Pinball FX3

PLEASE help! I do (did) almost all my gaming via Streaming (Steam In-home Streaming and NVidia Gamestream.) Now I can't play most of my games at all. :( :( :(

[LiveWire74]

I know it doesn't help, but I'm having same issue with games starting in BPM then minimizing and leaving a the blue BPM background on the screen. So far I can Alt+Tab back to the games this is happening with. This too all started happening after the latest Windows 10 1803 update. For what its worth, this update appears to have fixed windows 10 HDR issues, typical fix one problem break another....

I think I will start digging more into the properties of the games that work and the ones that don't to compare.

[Flappy Pannus]

Can confirm this as well since the Win10 April update, very annoying. I have a Radeon so this doesn't appear to be a specific Nvidia problem. Only solution is to disable the Steam overlay which of course isn't much of a solution.

A trigger that seems to make it occur more frequently for me is using downsampled higher resolutions with the game. Not using them doesn't guarantee it won't happen however (Metro 2033 Redux for example refuses to maintain focus when launched from BP mode regardless of resolution, has to be run from desktop to be usable at all), but happens with somewhat less frequency if the res of the game is the same 1080p as my monitor.

Specs: Pentium G4560
Mem: 8 GB DDR4-400
GPU: Radeon RX 560 4GB

Mitigation Attempts:

- Steam beta and non-beta clients
- All running tasks killed as much as possible
- Latest Beta Crimson drivers, as well as default drivers installed with Windows 10 April Update

[G3na5ide]

Sorry to hear you're both experiencing the same thing. Bittersweet, though, because I'm also glad it's not just my system then.

[MasterKrix]

Hey guys, I'm also having this exact issue and it's maddening. Did you hear back from support or gotten a fix yet?

[MartyWF]

Have you guys tried the May 17th Steam Beta and see if anything is diffferent??

It might help the developers troubleshoot this problem... So Post back with the results...

Cheers and Good Luck
MartyWF

[Flappy Pannus]

I try every beta update. No change so far.

[HW Support]

Can you please try disabling fullscreen optimizations for Steam?

To do this:

• Right click on Steam's executable (Default location is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam)
• Under the Compatibility tab, ensure the "Disable fullscreen optimizations" option is checked.

Once this is done, restart the computer and check if the issue persists.

Please let me know if this solves your issue.

[Flappy Pannus]

Originally posted by HW Support:

Can you please try disabling fullscreen optimizations for Steam?

To do this:

• Right click on Steam's executable (Default location is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam)
• Under the Compatibility tab, ensure the "Disable fullscreen optimizations" option is checked.

Once this is done, restart the computer and check if the issue persists.

Please let me know if this solves your issue.

Whoo-hoo! Indeed it does! Tested Metro Redux, Arkham Knight, Zombi, Bioshock - 4 games previously that either wouldn't start at all or required you to alt-tab after doing so when launched from BP. Now all launch perfectly and stay in full screen.

I was actually testing that for the games .exe's themslves as I'm aware of the full-screen 'optimizations' Win10 made, never thought to try it with Steam's own .exe which makes sense in retrospect.

Thanks for the quick reply.

[G3na5ide]

Originally posted by HW Support:

Can you please try disabling fullscreen optimizations for Steam?

To do this:

• Right click on Steam's executable (Default location is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam)
• Under the Compatibility tab, ensure the "Disable fullscreen optimizations" option is checked.

Once this is done, restart the computer and check if the issue persists.

Please let me know if this solves your issue.

I'm the OP. This fixes it, both on Stable and Beta, for both BPM locally with overlay and also for BPM Streaming.

Thanks very much for your help. :)

Julie
x

[kaasszje]

Thank you so much.
Saves me of going through deinstallation.

So happy right now :)

[LiveWire74]

Yes, thank you! Can confirm this worked for me as well.

[boojit]

The fix from Valve support worked for me too. @HW Support: I'm guessing that disabling fullscreen optimizations has a downside as well? Will it impact Steam's performance at all?

Thanks for the help...

[SinnerG]

I've been experiencing the same "minimizing games" problem where fullscreen games instantly minimize to the taskbar when launched through Steam. In my case, it happened when I launched them through the regular desktop interface on my computer.

After quite some research, I nailed the culprit to the "Fullscreen Optimizations" feature on WIndows 10. As I understand it, the main benefit from this feature is to enable fullscreen games to behave as if they were windowed applications for overlay purposes and quick/smooth alt+tabbing transitions between the game and other applications. Many have suggested to disable FSO for every individual game application. I tried this and it indeed fixed the problem for me. However, not being satisfied with this patchwork solution, I decided to dig a little deeper and figured out that Windows 10 is also applying "FSO to the Steam application itself. I then enabled back FSO for all the Steam games I had disabled it and instead just diabled it for the Steam application. The result was the same, all my games launched as they normally would.

My suspicion is that there is a concfict between Steam and the games themselves when both are launched as fullscreen applications, specially when Steam is in Big Picture Mode. The way Steam is currently coded might trigger Windows to recognize it as the main application and place it in the foreground by default, thus auto-minimizing all/most games into the taskbar, rather than treat it as an overlay as it should. This suspcion is reinforced by the fact that when this began to happen to me, I also lost the ability to show the Steam FPS Counter on all of my games. Something I have yet to solve.

I'm glad I found this thread with official Valve confirmation that my efforts were well placed. Even if I happened to find this after arriving to the same solution on my own. Hopefully, we can get more feedback as to the nature of this problem and whether a more elegant solution can be achieved.

For reference purposes: I'm running the latest Windows 10, 1803 (KB4103721); Radeon Adrenaline 18.5.1 Graphics Driver; Steam Client May 18, 2018 Build; Mouse/Keyboard/DS4 Controller, Launching games in Desktop mode with "Use the Big Picture Overlay when using a Steam Input enabled controller from the desktop" enabled.

[MartyWF]

I have noticed this now because of you...

+1

[MartyWF]

It still applies to my desktop with this problem..