Help! Games switches to desktop every time I click on an icon?

[jeff lackey]

Been a long time, got my subsim itch, bought and installed SH4 and the UBoat addon from steam. Runs fine except for one issue:

(Windows 7 64 bit)

Almost every time I click on an icon at the bottom (e.g. deck gun, periscope, etc.) the game goes to desktop. The game is still running, and I can usually click on the tab to get it back up, and then I can usually click on the icon and it will work. But then I click on another icon, e.g. AA gun or navigation, and same thing: goes to desktop, I get back in the game, etc.

The game runs fine, except that I can't seem to switch from screen to screen without it going to desktop.

Is this a known behavior with a fix?

Thanks!

[Arlo]

Erg. If your game isn't crashing entirely and you can get back into it and access the original icon but a different one does it all over, I'd suspect a setting, service, process or application external to the game. But that's a hazy guess and I couldn't imagine venturing further.

[jeff lackey]

Well, one piece of data, just discovered it doesn't do this if I run in windowed mode. I'd really prefer to run in full screen mode, though.

[magic452]

With Windows 7 you need to put the game into another folder besides "program files". Make a different folder and install it there.
Run as administrator. Find the SH4.exe file in the main folder and use that instead of the SH4.gu that is the default shortcut. That is if Steam doesn't have it's own launcher. Steam does some strange things sometimes that's why I always get the disk version.

These may or may not fix your problem but if you don't do these it may very well cause problems when you decide to add mods.

Good luck and good hunting.

Magic

[jeff lackey]

With Windows 7 you need to put the game into another folder besides "program files". Make a different folder and install it there.
Run as administrator. Find the SH4.exe file in the main folder and use that instead of the SH4.gu that is the default shortcut. That is if Steam doesn't have it's own launcher. Steam does some strange things sometimes that's why I always get the disk version.

These may or may not fix your problem but if you don't do these it may very well cause problems when you decide to add mods.

Good luck and good hunting.

Magic

Thanks for the ideas.

The game is actually installed in the Steam folder (vs. program files.) Steam has a launcher, but I have also run the program by simply clicking on the sh4.exe file.

Odd that the problem goes away when running in Windowed mode, but comes back when running in full screen/non-Windowed mode.