Windows 7 enters un-escapeable blackscreen during video playback and alt-tabbing X-Com 2 ?!?

Hello,

It's time to report this new problem that my system has with Windows 7 and
X-Com 2.

X-Com 2 is a video game which uses bink video player to play scenes.

During the video scene I tried to increasing the volume and also pressed
alt-tab on purpose.

During increasing the volume the game itself minimizes which is a bit weird.

The volume know graphics is supposed to be overlayed by that doesn't happen.

If I switch back fast to the game, sometimes it will work, but sometimes
not.

Sometimes while:

1. Playing X-Com 2.

and

2. A video scene is playing in X-Com 2.

and

3. Alt-Tabbing back and forth.

The following will happen:

1. A black screen appears.

2. Windows 7 seems to loose control.

3. Task manager will not come up.

4. Control-Alt-Delete will not bring up task manager.

5. Some beeping can be heard if I try to press keys or mouse many times.

So some conclusions/observations:

1. The minimizing of the game itself is already weird behaviour.

2 .The black screen could indicate some kind of video/display/graphics
driver problem.

3. Since the problem only occurs during bink video player it could be
related to MMX/XMM/SSE multimedia/video instructions.

So possible conclusions:

1. First of all Windows 7 can't handle a video/display driver crash or bug.

2. It could be a bug in Windows 7 itself.

But for now it's most likely that it's a bug in:

3. NVIDIA's Display Driver.

However I would not rule out a more serious problem in Windows 7 context
switching in relation to special instructions and/or video driver.

My system does have some missing windows patches though and my system is a
bit old/slower than other systems.

AMD X2 3800+ dual core processor and GT 520 graphics carsd.

So first it must be diagnosed if it's just my system/software stack or if
this is happening to other people's system as well.

For now the only solution was to press the RESET button to do a reboot.

So try it out and see if your computer will enter an un-escapable black
sceen during video playback in X-Com 2.

I'd like to know the cause or at least have it solve sometime in future...

Perhaps not even on my old system but future systems... this does smell a
bit like it could be used for denial of service attacks or so !

Hopefully I am just being delirious about that last possibility !

I will re-post this message on nvidia forum where it probably belongs, but
also x-com 2 forum just in case, I expect to find more testers there then
here !

(Great game by the way... my review will come when I am finished playing
with it... which will take multiple days possibly... )

Bye,
Skybuck.

Skybuck Flying wrote:
Hello,

It's time to report this new problem that my system has with Windows 7
and X-Com 2.

X-Com 2 is a video game which uses bink video player to play scenes.

During the video scene I tried to increasing the volume and also pressed
alt-tab on purpose.

During increasing the volume the game itself minimizes which is a bit
weird.

The volume know graphics is supposed to be overlayed by that doesn't
happen.

If I switch back fast to the game, sometimes it will work, but sometimes
not.

Sometimes while:

1. Playing X-Com 2.

and

2. A video scene is playing in X-Com 2.

and

3. Alt-Tabbing back and forth.

The following will happen:

1. A black screen appears.

2. Windows 7 seems to loose control.

3. Task manager will not come up.

4. Control-Alt-Delete will not bring up task manager.

5. Some beeping can be heard if I try to press keys or mouse many times.

So some conclusions/observations:

1. The minimizing of the game itself is already weird behaviour.

2 .The black screen could indicate some kind of video/display/graphics
driver problem.

3. Since the problem only occurs during bink video player it could be
related to MMX/XMM/SSE multimedia/video instructions.

So possible conclusions:

1. First of all Windows 7 can't handle a video/display driver crash or bug.

2. It could be a bug in Windows 7 itself.

But for now it's most likely that it's a bug in:

3. NVIDIA's Display Driver.

However I would not rule out a more serious problem in Windows 7 context
switching in relation to special instructions and/or video driver.

My system does have some missing windows patches though and my system is
a bit old/slower than other systems.

AMD X2 3800+ dual core processor and GT 520 graphics carsd.

So first it must be diagnosed if it's just my system/software stack or
if this is happening to other people's system as well.

For now the only solution was to press the RESET button to do a reboot.

So try it out and see if your computer will enter an un-escapable black
sceen during video playback in X-Com 2.

I'd like to know the cause or at least have it solve sometime in future...

Perhaps not even on my old system but future systems... this does smell
a bit like it could be used for denial of service attacks or so !

Hopefully I am just being delirious about that last possibility !

I will re-post this message on nvidia forum where it probably belongs,
but also x-com 2 forum just in case, I expect to find more testers there
then here !

(Great game by the way... my review will come when I am finished playing
with it... which will take multiple days possibly... )

Bye,
Skybuck.

Try switching Windows 7 to the Basic Theme. Try to
avoid compositing, or having Windows use the video
card for any accelerated features. That's in case this
bug is related to a resource contention (too many things
doing shader stuff at the same time).

Modern Bink uses shader code for rendering, which
is an added complication. That means it can behave
like the game itself, except the Bink code is likely
a separate thread (and probably not well integrated
with the game rendering plane).

The game developer, probably uses info from this
page. For example, there is a setting for when
focus is lost. I don't think you can adjust this,
but the game developer might have a fix.

http://www.radgametools.com/binkhbap.htm

"Auto-pause when focus is lost:"

HTH,
Paul