gameex fullscreen issues (windows 7)

[twotone8]

i'm noticing a recurring problem with running gameex in fullscreen mode in windows 7

often times when exiting an emulator, or even when simply starting up the program, gameex fails to render whatsoever.

the windows 7 taskbar at the bottom of the screen still indicates that a gameex window is present, but you have to click on the icon in order to bring the program back up, and even then it only works about half of the time.

the other half of the time the screen simply flickers for a moment, and then gameex 'minimizes' once more.

i've found this error occurs consistantly when exiting mednafen, and several other random times.

at first i thought that it was a problem with xpadder. xpadder has an 'autoprofile' option which detects which program is in focus, and adjusts the xpadder profile accordingly. sometimes this pulls focus from whichever fullscreen application should be running. when booting up zsnes, for example, the emulator will boot up minimized, and once again you have to click on the icon to actually display the program.

i just tested gameex with xpadder completely disabled, and the issue still persists.

any ideas of what might be going on here?

it's difficult to diagnose, seeing as it's difficult to reproduce with any level fo consistency. i'm attempting to post a log file for the issue, but now that i'm trying to reproduce it, it doesn't seem to be happening. hopefully it's magically worked itself out, but i doubt it.

[Geronimo]

I'm seeing this too, sometimes even when starting GameEx. GameEx will try to "maximize" its Window and suddenly minimizes itself to the taskbar, without displaying anything. When that happens I usually end the GameEx task and try running it again, which works after a few attempts (or after enabling windowed mode in the config file).

[twotone8]

hrm. i'm still having no luck diagnosing just what exactly is making gameex loose focus in different situations.

it seems that any activity whatsoever endangers gameex from losing focus.

as far as i understand, any time there's a minimizing window or taskbar notification, gameex minimizes if it's in fullscreen mode.

this is incredibly problematic for me, seeing as xpadder is constantly loading profiles and minimizing in the background. to counter this problem in certain situations, i've disabled explorer.exe in the 'launch before' category, which works just fine, but when reinitilizing explorer.exe in 'launch after' fullscreen gameex looses focus.

would it be at all possible to run gammeex in a borderless window? if that were possible, it might help with some of the issues.

edit: fixed (i hope). right click the gameex.exe file and go to compatability tab. make sure 'disable desktop composition' is checked. that should eliminate the focus issue.

[Tempest]

Thanks for posting the solution.

[Ninja Rygar]

Twotone that ONE post just improved my system 100%!!! Holy smokes I can't believe it was that easy!

[Raitsa]

By checking 'disable desktop composition' fixed my cabinet with Tiny7 rev01 booting to GameEx perfectly, thanks twotone8!

[twotone8]

no prob. bob.

if you're using a cab system, you might as well just tell windows 7 not to use the 'aero' 3d desktop thing to begin with and it'll probably make youre lives much easier. just right cliek, go to personalize, and click on 'windows 7 basic'. it basically does the same thing as 'disable desktop composition', but permanently, not just when gameex is launched.