Flashes back and forth to desktop

[Herr Mike]

Hey folks, problem here.

I recently installed the Orange Box...and when I go to play Ep 2 it shows the Valve head guy and then the loading screen, but at some point it goes to the desktop. Then it tries to bring up the game again, then back to the desktop, so on, so on, eventually crashing.

Half-Life 2 works fine, I haven't tried Ep 1 yet but it worked prior to installing Orange Box.

My gfx card is an 256 MB Nvidia XFX 8600 GT, on a 3.0 MHz CPU with 2 GB RAM.

Thanks!

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I've had issues with this before when I moved all my games over to my new computer. The minimising was caused by my anti-virus asking if it should permit hl2.exe. The game tries to maximise itself in this eternal fight of computer related carnage.

I'd recommend having a look at your firewall / anti-virus settings, also if that turns up nothing try launching the game in windowed mode to see if you can see anything causing the game to minimise. To do that:

1. Right-click on the game title under the My games tab in Steam and select Properties.
2. Under the General tab click the Set launch options... button.
3. Enter "-windowed"
4. Close the game's Properties window and launch the game.

Your system should run Orange Box fine, are you on Vista by any chance? Could be UAC butting in...

 

[Herr Mike]

Thanks, but no luck. I tried the windows thing, and it came up okay. What should I look for? Will something be running in the background?

I disabled the Firewall, and I'm not on Vista.

 

[Herr Mike]

edit

for length

 

[PimpinPenguin]

How do I get it out of windowed mode? I deleted the command but it stays. Is there a list of commands somewhere?
Reply With Quote

You tried using this command -fullscreen

 

[Herr Mike]

right - got it.

So why would it work in windowed mode but not full screen?

 

[Herr Mike]

*bump*

I wish I could get this working. I sent a question to Steam over a week ago and I haven't heard anything.

I tried TF2 and Portal, they do the same thing. One more note, after a few taskbar/fullscreen cycles, it does crash, with an "unhandled win32 exception error". Would it be any use to uninstall/reinstall? I thought you only got a couple installs before Steam thinks you are pirating it so I'd rather not use them up.

I'll have an unbridled man-crush on anyone who helps me.

 

[Xendance]

I seem to only get this problem when I'm trying to use Source Recorder, so I would also like to find a way to defeat this problem.

 

[Herr Mike]

I got it fixed but I don't really know how. It was a big pain. As per Steam's suggestion, I updated my chipset drivers, which caused my USB controller to crap out, so I couldn't use my mouse or keyboard which makes it hard to fix things. Finally, I used my windows disc to run a "repair" which fixed the USB issue but jacked up my windows registry so I couldn't install the 90 windows updates that I now needed since the repair. But I got that fixed and the games work.