Full screen broken for games

[Lylio]

Hi everyone,

For some reason, a few of my games dislike going full screen. The games start windowed, and when I hit alt-enter (full screen shortcut), the screen flickers back and forth between windowed and full screen, then reverts to windowed. Also, it doesn't matter if I set the screen to full in the game video options - the game will be in windowed mode, but say 'full screen' in the options.

I think this issue started after I tried to free up some free disk space by removing some Nvidia files: I deleted old driver downloads from C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2 but I guide I read also suggested deleting everything from C:\NVIDIA which was perhaps a mistake.

Not every game has this full screen issue, and some games eventually will 'stick' on full screen if I press alt-enter several times in a row. I've downloaded the latest GPU drivers, but that's not fixing the issue. Any ideas what else I can try here? Is a complete fresh install of everything Nvidia related (like GeForce experience) the best way forward? Many thanks.

My specs:
Nvidia GTX 980ti
Acer XB270H G-Sync monitor
Windows 10
Geforce Experience

 

[Dom_79]

Sounds lie you would benefit from a clean uninstall and a fresh install.

Follow the instructions in this link from the Nvidia website.

Hope this fixes the issue (it should )

 

[Lylio]

Thanks for the reply Dom. I followed your advice, uninstalled the Nvidia drivers with 'Display Driver Uninstaller', and reinstalled with the latest drivers. Same problem. For example, one of the games that has the full screen problem is NBA 2K17. In the video options for this game, I have it set to: window mode = full screen and refresh rate = 60hz. With these settings, it's like the game is almost full screen but the title bar at the top won't disappear. Here's a screen shot to demonstrate: you can see the title bar and the top right maximize button is greyed out.

http://i68.tinypic.com/30s7kw0.png

Thanks again.

 

[Dom_79]

Sorry to hear that it didn't work out Lylio

I've searched a bit and the closest answer to an issue like this I could find was something to do with refresh rates (but I don't think that applies as you can select 60Hz refresh rate).

Given that as far as you can tell these issues only started after you deleted some things suggested to you by guides I could only make guesses as to what might be the issue.

Do you have any screen overlay apps running? The Steam overlay (or Origin/Uplay if they have one), any hardware monitoring software (like Afterburner, etc.).

You mentioned you use Geforce Experience. I don't use that program but is it possible that Geforce Experience is making/assigning different settings than those applied by you in the game menu?

Only other thing I can think of that could have anything at all to do with this would be if you happened to switch to an HDMI cable when this started. Nvidia defaults HDMI connected displays to a limited color range (and another setting I think) but that would not effect fullscreen at all

Hope you can get this sorted

 

[Lylio]

I thought I'd update this post, in case it can help someone else. Going to Nvidia control panel > adjust desktop size and position > change scaling mode to 'aspect ratio' (mine was on full-screen) has solved my problem for a couple of games. For example NBA 2K17 will start in full-screen mode and retain this setting in its video menu. Another game which would only start minimized to the task bar now runs full-screen without issue. However, other examples such as Watch Dogs 2 and Skyrim Definitive start up with crazy flickering if the're set to load in full screen, they still only will work in windowed or windowed borderless mode.

So, I've made a little progress. If anyone has any idea of a tool I could use to try and figure out what is going on behind the scenes when this flicker happens, I'd be really grateful. Maybe there's some kind of Windows log that outputs what the graphics card/monitor is trying to do when Watch Dogs 2 / Skyrim load in full screen. Many thanks.

 

[Tim_156]

I thought I'd update this post, in case it can help someone else. Going to Nvidia control panel > adjust desktop size and position > change scaling mode to 'aspect ratio' (mine was on full-screen) has solved my problem for a couple of games. For example NBA 2K17 will start in full-screen mode and retain this setting in its video menu. Another game which would only start minimized to the task bar now runs full-screen without issue. However, other examples such as Watch Dogs 2 and Skyrim Definitive start up with crazy flickering if the're set to load in full screen, they still only will work in windowed or windowed borderless mode.

So, I've made a little progress. If anyone has any idea of a tool I could use to try and figure out what is going on behind the scenes when this flicker happens, I'd be really grateful. Maybe there's some kind of Windows log that outputs what the graphics card/monitor is trying to do when Watch Dogs 2 / Skyrim load in full screen. Many thanks.

I have the same issue

 

[Lylio]

Sorry to hear that Tim. Out of interest, is something that's started happening recently? I used to have no problem (Watch Dogs 2 and Skyrim Definitive would start and run in full-screen without issue). But after clearing out some old Nvidia installer folders, I think that's when the issue started. However, I have done a complete clean install of all Nvidia files so it doesn't make sense why the problem hasn't been fixed.

My instinct is thinking it's got something to do with a monitor screen refresh conflict. For example, someone said if your monitor is set at 59Hz then trying to open up a game which is set at 60Hz will make it switch crazily between full-screen and windowed. I have a G-Sync monitor set at 144Hz so I'm not sure where to begin. For Skyrim, I originally had to use Nvidia Inspector to force a frame rate cap in order to fix a glitch in the opening scene, so I might need to back and experiment with that.

If you make any progress, it would be great to hear your solution.

Cheers.