Windows and WITPAE fighting for control of screen

[OPilot]

Beginning on 9/27/23, I started having very frequent occurrences of windows taking control of the screen and displaying the desktop while I am in WITPAE. There was a Windows 10 update on my computer that same day. I run with full screen WITPAE. I have to regain control by using CTRL-ALT-DEL and then canceling out it. It is not a show stopper but it sure is an aggravation. Even during the combat replay, the desktop will flicker on and then back to the game.

Is anyone else else experiencing this? Does anyone know of a solution? I uninstalled the last Windows update without it improving the situation and so maybe it is just a coincidence that the Windows 10 updated about the same time. I have not tried different command line switches yet.

[RangerJoe]

Try using windows mode instead of full screen.

[OPilot]

Thanks. I may do that. I was trying to avoid it. As I remember, that cuts off the bottom of the screen. There was some reason that I didn't like that.

[BBfanboy]

I run mine in windowed mode and it does NOT cut off the bottom of the screen because I moved the Windows Bar over to the right side where I do the fewest clicks when giving orders.
I run at 1680 X 1050 on my 32 in monitor. I could probably do a higher resolution but the screen text would be too small to read easily then.

ETA: Bonus - With the Windows Bar visible on the right I can minimize the game to do other things without using CTRL-ALT-DEL to switch to desktop view.

[OPilot]

Thank you.

Windows mode with the task bar on the right and 1680 x 1050 works great. I shouldn't take long to get used to the task bar on the right.

[rockmedic109]

Thank You.

This is exactly my problem. I had it fixed and when I come back to AE, the problem returns. I could not understand why. Windows updates makes sense as the cause. I had put a period at the end of "sense", reread it and added "as the cause". Better this way.

I had toyed with windows transparency before and it worked before but now it does nothing.

I have to use windowed mode I guess. Annoying.

[Chris21wen]

Thank You.

This is exactly my problem. I had it fixed and when I come back to AE, the problem returns. I could not understand why. Windows updates makes sense as the cause. I had put a period at the end of "sense", reread it and added "as the cause". Better this way.

I had toyed with windows transparency before and it worked before but now it does nothing.

I have to use windowed mode I guess. Annoying.

On some machines full screen has always been a problem. My display is set to 1820x1080 so I use -pxf1900 -pyf1000 creating a more or less full screen window without taking the toolbar space.

[szmike]

I had similar problem in win11 until I set the taskbar to autohide. It stopped windows from popping in the game.
It's not perfect solution, some graphical quirks occur sometimes, but it's playable now.
My problem with windowed version is, it doesn't scale up the game, it's too small. In fullscreen at 1600x900 it scales nicely e.g. all icons and stuff are bigger.

[Chris21wen]

I had similar problem in win11 until I set the taskbar to autohide. It stopped windows from popping in the game.
It's not perfect solution, some graphical quirks occur sometimes, but it's playable now.
My problem with windowed version is, it doesn't scale up the game, it's too small. In fullscreen at 1600x900 it scales nicely e.g. all icons and stuff are bigger.

Could you explain what you mean by 'Scales up'?

[szmike]

I had similar problem in win11 until I set the taskbar to autohide. It stopped windows from popping in the game.
It's not perfect solution, some graphical quirks occur sometimes, but it's playable now.
My problem with windowed version is, it doesn't scale up the game, it's too small. In fullscreen at 1600x900 it scales nicely e.g. all icons and stuff are bigger.

Could you explain what you mean by 'Scales up'?

I mean the size of everything in game as seen, e.g. lower resolution fullscreen magnifies view, unlike windowed mode

[Chris21wen]

Not used full screen for ages so have not seen this scaling up as you say, but it does as I've just tried it. Full screen does and always has caused problems with windows which is why I never use it using pxf/pyf settings but these do not change the size of the text or hexes, just how much of the map you can see. I'm sure there're some display savvy bods out there that can give you the reason why.

[BBfanboy]

The reason why is easy - what we see of the map is artwork - a series of .gif or .jpg files that fit together to form the map image. The text like base names etc. is part of the artwork so it must stay at the same scale as the terrain/sea image. The only way I was able to get a bigger map area on screen and keep the text legible was to get a bigger monitor - 35 inch.