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Game freeze on alt-tab during heavy asset loading in Fullscreen mode
Reviewed, NormalPublic

Description

After months of postponing, I have recently applied the Win10 Fall Creators Update to my PC, and immediately I started experiencing freezes when alt-tabbing out of the game. It only happens if the game is in Fullscreen mode, when it's loading assets (especially building textures). Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0P6l6ZSi-Y

The freezes happen in SP and MP on any map, for both arma3.exe (x86) and arma3_x64.exe, regardless of mods or BattlEye, even if GeForce Experience is disabled. There are no error messages, and the Task Manager is showing arma3_x64.exe as "Not responding" with 0.5% CPU usage (6-core, no HT). My game files are on a regular hard drive. I am able to reproduce the freeze on every attempt. Happens on stable (v1.80.143689), dev (v1.81.144121), and Arma3Legacy176 (1.76.143187).

Details

Severity
Major
Resolution
Open
Reproducibility
Always
Operating System
Windows 10 x64
Operating System Version
build 1709 version 16299.125
Category
Game Freezes
Steps To Reproduce
  1. Make sure you are in Fullscreen mode in the Video options
  2. Open Eden on any map
  3. Make sure you are in 2D mode (M key) as not to preload assets
  4. Place player in a large city
  5. Play scenario
  6. When the game fades in, immediately alt-tab
  7. Press Win+Tab to open a new desktop to terminate the game because it's frozen :(

Event Timeline

AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 12:47 AM
AgentRev edited Additional Information. (Show Details)
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 12:49 AM
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 12:52 AM
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 12:55 AM
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 12:58 AM
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 1:22 AM
AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 1:45 AM

Yrp! Same for me. It happens very often since 1.80 Vanilla. My left Alt key toggle also very often in altitude mode in 3den editor (I just have to strike ALT one more time to toggle in normal ALT behavior. Arma is the only one software to do this weird thing.
I also experience some heavier freeze with no possibility to ALT tab and work on task manager as in video. I can just shut down the PC and restart it!
Is it linked to French keyboard? I guess not. To video card? I'll see that with further NVIDIA drivers, but I guess not. So, What BI/Steam did with the keyboard interaction??? Why does these problems happen on Arma only?

AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 4:25 AM
Lex added a subscriber: Lex.Jan 21 2018, 11:22 AM

Defragmenting game files after large updates and user files, even for SSD, speeds up the game loading a little, but this also does not exclude the possibility of sometimes freezing games for me. Try to optimize the disks with the program Disk Defrag Pro, the program has the ability to optimize only files that have defragmentation. The windows disk optimizer for this task will not work.

@Lex So, it's not a solution and not related to 0% CPU usage and/or GPU freeze + ALT key malfunction in Arma only.

AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 6:38 PM

Seems Microsoft has put some weird stuff in the Fall Creators Update, I've been having different issues with other apps, i.e. https://gitlab.com/tortoisegit/tortoisegit/issues/3087

AgentRev updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 21 2018, 7:44 PM
Wulf changed the task status from New to Reviewed.Jan 24 2018, 4:36 PM
Wulf added a subscriber: Wulf.

Hello.

Thank you for the report. We will have a look at it and see what can be done about it.

Vitdom added a subscriber: Vitdom.Mar 20 2018, 12:24 PM

This issue can still be reproduced in the RC of 1.82. It is even enough to simply Turn Around, then immediately ALT-TAB to freeze Arma 3.

Still happening in 1.84