Episode 5 minimizes on startup

[Haggis]

Ah, seems I might be able to pass my exam after all, because for me, episode 5 is unplayable at present - just after firing up, it minimizes itself. When I bring it back up, same thing, after a second it minimizes again. Is this due to downloading the 'early version', or is it a weird bug that only I am experiencing?

[Emily]

Originally Posted by Haggis

Ah, seems I might be able to pass my exam after all, because for me, episode 5 is unplayable at present - just after firing up, it minimizes itself. When I bring it back up, same thing, after a second it minimizes again. Is this due to downloading the 'early version', or is it a weird bug that only I am experiencing?

Try deleting prefs.prop out of the game data folder before launching?

If that doesn't help, please make a post in the support forum and explain exactly when this happens (when you first launch the game, or when you click the "launch game" button on the launcher screen).

EDIT: Sit tight, we've reproduced this here and are looking at it.

[tabacco]

I split this off into its own thread. I was able to reproduce this on my machine. Do you by any chance have two monitors? I disabled my second display and it started up fine. Then I re-enabled the display and it kept working fine. Also, running it windowed always worked either way.

[Emily]

Just a note - to run in a window you can press Alt-Enter. Deleting prefs.prop also makes the game run in a window.

[Zomby]

This is a bug that is present ever since episode 2 came out, only episode 1 is unaffected. It's been brought up in the past but Telltale doesn't seem to care about it and no patch has been issued to correct it, and every new release has that same bug.

When you manage to start the game in a window, you can set it at the same resolution as your desktop and then choose fullscreen again wich will let you play in fullscreen mode. This was working for me up until a couple weeks ago when I changed my screen and upped my resolution to 1280x1024 wich, pretty unbeliveably, is not supported by the game. I am now forced to run the game in a window for as long as they will continue to ignore the problem.

[halben]

When I click "Launch Game!" from the reminder window, a white box pops up in the top-left corner of my screen. The screen then goes all black, and the screen fills up with the GameTap log, then the TellTale Games logo, then, the program minimizes to my task bar.

If I click on the minimized app, the screen goes black, and I hear a staticy sound, then, it immediately minimizes again.

Deleting the prefs.prop file doesn't change the behavior, and pressing ALT-Enter at startup will not move the app into windowed mode.

I'm running Vista 64-bit, with a NVIDIA 8800GTS video card and I'm running at 1680x1050 resolution.

This same configuration worked fine on episode 4.

Hope this helps narrow things down some.

[Emily]

This is a bug that is present ever since episode 2 came out, only episode 1 is unaffected. It's been brought up in the past but Telltale doesn't seem to care about it and no patch has been issued to correct it, and every new release has that same bug.

It is? A couple of people reported a problem with the game minimizing when it was first launched -- before it even activated (or that's what I thought) -- and I was led to believe it was a problem with the activation system. I did pursue it with the folks who make the activation system but we never reached a resolution. Maybe I misunderstood the problem? My apologies if that was the case.

[halben]

I manually dropped my display resolution from 1680x1050 to 800x600, and the program started fine. This screwed up my icon arrangment on the desktop and looked pretty bad on a 22" 16x10 LCD, but the game did start working. It might work at higher resolutions, too, but definitely not in my monitor's native mode of 1680x1050.

[Haggis]

Er, sorry about the late reply, but I went and played Shivering Isles for a while, and got a bit carried away with it. :P

Originally Posted by tabacco

I split this off into its own thread. I was able to reproduce this on my machine. Do you by any chance have two monitors? I disabled my second display and it started up fine. Then I re-enabled the display and it kept working fine. Also, running it windowed always worked either way.

No, just one monitor. I haven't experienced this problem with any of the previous episodes... I'll try Zomby's suggestion though, since my monitor is set to 1024x768.

[shole]

have the problem here aswell
initially when i start it, it stays on screen, but when i try clicking anywhere or pressing any key, it minimizes and button presses apply on the application underneath
then i tried deleting props and launched the game again
now i get the same issue described here.. it minimizes as soon as i enter fullscreen mode
appears to run fine in a window, but that's a really uncomfortable way to play a game like this
i have not encountered this issue with earlier episodes

[Haggis]

I couldn't get the game to run in a window actually, but I tried this:

Originally Posted by halben

I manually dropped my display resolution from 1680x1050 to 800x600, and the program started fine.

Changing the monitor's resolution to 800x600 and then starting the game got rid of the problem, but I imagine people with newer monitors may not be able to solve the problem like this...

[shole]

that is hardly a solution

i ran the game in the window as it started, made the game resolution match my desktop (1600x1200) and hit alt+enter to bring it fullscreen
and now it works, albeit at desktop resolution, which is a waste of resources in a primarily nonvisual game
so there's something wrong with the way the engine handles resolution changes
hope this helps

[Emily]

Thanks for the info, guys - please keep posting about your experiences with this so we can try to nail it down. Even if this was an issue for earlier episodes, it wasn't as widespread as this so something must have changed. The more you can tell us about what works / doesn't work, the more likely we are to figure out the problem.

[Dangerzone]

this may not be the same error, but this may help shed some light on this problem

when i was playing the gametap version of the game, there were a few times where the game froze when entering a new area and the game snapped back to a window....... the window was completely white, and the bar said that the program was not responding, but after about 20-15 seconds the game came back on and then went full screen again

this happened when i started a new game, entered boscos for the first time, and when i entered reality 2.0 for the first time (i think)

i have installed the telltale version of the game, but i have not played it though yet, i have noticed that the game started on 800x600 with high graphic detail, but the gametap version started on 1024x800 (the closest fullscreen screen resolution to my laptops native 1280x800 wide screen) with high graphics, so clearly something has already been changed with the game

i am running windows vista 32bit basic edition on a gateway laptop with ati xpress 200m integrated graphics and one gig of ram

[Pvt._Public]

This is the first time I've had a problem with any of the games, and it's this problem. I have a single monitor and am playing on XP. I refuse to attempt to try it at 800X600 because I have a 1680X1050 22 inch screen and I think it's a sin to do 800X600 unless I'm playing a SCUMM game on it. I'll give my laptop a go.

[Emily]

For those of you who switched to 800x600 - if you then switch to a higher resolution, then quit, then restart, what happens? Do you have the same problem or are you then able to launch the game normally?

[Pvt._Public]

Having deleted prefs.whatever, it seems that the only problem seems to happen when I switch to fullscreen. I can play the game fine in windowed mode but when I switch to fullscreen it minimizes itself after half a second. All the resolutions work but it simply refuses to work in fullscreen.

[Frostyboy]

I had the same problem when I first booted the game up, and managed to fix it by deleting prefs.prop and then, while running in windowed mode, quickly switched it to full screen in 1024X768 which is my desktop resolution.

After that it's been working fine but it took a bit of maximizing the game and rushing to click the 'apply' button before it minimized again.

I'm running a P4 3.4Ghz with 2GB of RAM and Windows XP if that helps at all.

Good luck solving the problem. My heart bleeds for anyone who still can't get it running properly.

[marsan]

Have those of you who has this problem installed the driver for your monitor? I had similar problems when I had only installed my graphics card drivers without installing the drivers for my monitor(Windows just used one of those Standard Monitors, which doesn't work properly with all monitors, and some games have problems with those drivers). Then I installed the monitor drivers from the cd that came with my monitor, and suddenly I had no problems.

Also, try right clicking the desktop, and selecting properties. Then go to settings, and then "advanced", and then to "monitor". Make sure the "Screen refresh rate" is set to either 60, 70 or 75. If it is not, try one of those refresh rates and see if it works better then.

[Haggis]

Originally Posted by Emily

For those of you who switched to 800x600 - if you then switch to a higher resolution, then quit, then restart, what happens? Do you have the same problem or are you then able to launch the game normally?

Yes, that works. I switched to 800x600 in Windows, then to 1024x768 in the game, and then back to 1024x768 in Windows as well. Now the game starts without any problems.