Ever since I had window’s vista, I felt that I was out of luck when it came to computer games. Every game I installed would start up, show the mouse for half a second (with a black screen), then minimize. If I tried to un-minimize, the game would just go through the same cycle… Making it impossible to play the game.
It started with monopoly from McDonalds, and then continued with World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights, Sim City 4, etc.
I started reading the forums on various sites, and I did find 1 solution that always worked: If the game had a windowed mode, use it. So that’s what I did for the games that had it… But for those games that didn’t, I was still feeling screwed.
Well today, I found a more solution that seems to work in all cases on my stupid windows vista machine.
It seems, if I disable my second monitor, and undock/close pidgin (yes, I have to do both from what I can tell) the game works fine. It seems the docked pidgin likes to kick me out of the game, as does the second monitor. Very strange problem.. but hey, at least now I can play me some Sim City 4 (or more liking Neverwinter Nights).