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Dosbox screen freezes when alt-tabbing

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First post, by Danny252

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I recently started playing around with dosbox 0.72 on Vista - I've used .71 before successfully without any problems.

Having installed 0.72, I noticed that the screen seems to forget to refresh after alt-tabbing - but only if the program I've alt-tabbed to doesn't fill the entirety of the dosbox screen.

That probably making no sense, see the picture at the following link:

dosboxscreenfreezenm4.th.jpg

You can see the text is updating on the right hand side, where the folder behind is, but on the left hand side, it is frozen. Moving dosbox, pressing printscreen, selecting a program with is completely behind dosbox and then alt-tabbing back (i.e. my browser in that picture) all get it updating again.

Seeing as this happens in dosbox itself, no game can be blamed!

PC Specs:
Dell MP061 (Inspiron 9400 Laptop)
Intel Core 2 T7200 2GHz
1024 MB DDR2
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 380MB Shared
Windows Vista Home
Guessing "Video Mode" is the value under "output" in the config, this is set to "surface"

Reply 1 of 5, by MiniMax

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You used 0.71 on the same Vista box?

Do you still have it installed? Or can you get access to a copy of the dosbox.conf file you had in 0.71?

Does it differ from the 0.72 config?

DOSBox 60 seconds guide | How to ask questions
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Lenovo M58p | Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66 GHz | Radeon R7 240 | LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH40N | Fedora 32

Reply 2 of 5, by Danny252

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I don't still have the 0.71 install around, but as far as I know the dosbox.conf was mostly out of the box (the only settings I would have changed would be a few of the soundblaster and the cycles up/down settings).

Having downloaded 0.71 again and tried, it turns out it is giving me this problem right now - I'm quite sure I would've alt-tabbed in and out of my old 0.71 install when I used it before and noticed if I had the problem then.

As for changes to my PC, Windows Update (yay.) is about the only thing that would've been doing much changing, other than my usual add/delete of games and files over time.

Reply 3 of 5, by MiniMax

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You could try experimenting with the output=.... settings in dosbox.conf. Not that I think it matters, but .....

DOSBox 60 seconds guide | How to ask questions
_________________
Lenovo M58p | Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66 GHz | Radeon R7 240 | LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH40N | Fedora 32

Reply 4 of 5, by Danny252

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It may not matter seemingly, but it did something!
Overlay, Opengl and Openglnb modes all stop the problem from occuring; Ddraw has the problem but after a few seconds it loses the problem; Surface (which I was using originally) still has the problem.
I'll use one of the 3 working modes for now, unless anyone has some idea for solving it?

Reply 5 of 5, by doomer

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Danny252 wrote:

It may not matter seemingly, but it did something!
Overlay, Opengl and Openglnb modes all stop the problem from occuring; Ddraw has the problem but after a few seconds it loses the problem; Surface (which I was using originally) still has the problem.
I'll use one of the 3 working modes for now, unless anyone has some idea for solving it?

I can also confirm that issue. I am using Vista Ultimate 32 bit and Dosbox 0.72. I have set the output to directdraw since that works best for me. As Danny252 has said, the alt-tab problem on that mode is just a bit annoying, one may have to wait a few seconds. An easy solution is to minimize and restore the screen. Additionally, when I start dosbox I usually go full-screen and start playing immediately so that is just a minor nuisance.

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