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Craig234: I'm rather furious at gog. I ran a game in my library, and it completely hung my computer - a black screen, no ctrl-alt-delete, no alt-tab, no clt-f4, just a power shutdown. It's not the first game to do this.

I expect gog to provide some quality control. If I'm running Windows 10 64-bit, as I am, games should not do this.

If they DO need something to be done to prevent the hang, the game should make that VERY clear and not run without informing the player and until they're done.

I lost a number of unsaved files by having to power-off.
This should help if you get that problem when some games hard crash your desktop

To add a virtual desktop, open up the new Task View pane by clicking the Task View button (two overlapping rectangles) on the taskbar, or by pressing the Windows Key + Tab. In the Task View pane, click New desktop to add a virtual desktop. If you have two or more desktops already open, the "Add a desktop" button will appear as a gray tile with a plus symbol. You can also quickly add a desktop without entering the Task View pane by using the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + Ctrl + D.

You can switch to new desktop and end task of the old one escaping this issue. give it a shot next time.
This sounds like a problem I had not too long ago. I would go AFK, and I come back to find my PC with a black screen and was unresponsive. The screen went black in place of an actual screen saver, but was impossible to restore, short of a cold reset. Try turning this off. It worked for me.

Edit: see the enclosed image for instructions.
Attachments:
monitor.png (19 Kb)
Post edited September 17, 2020 by jsidhu762
Offtopicish: All this is reminding me that Windows doesn't have a secure access key or escape sequence like REISUB. Even if your system is nearly utterly hosed, you can still get out of a very sticky widget.
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Craig234: I'm rather furious at gog. I ran a game in my library, and it completely hung my computer - a black screen, no ctrl-alt-delete, no alt-tab, no clt-f4, just a power shutdown. It's not the first game to do this.
I presume "power shutdown" means just that, you had to cut power to the system without a gracious proper system shutdown. A power off.

It is not clear if your whole system was really fully crashed, or merely you were stuck in a black screen and the system appeared unresponsive. Ctrl-alt-del not working is a bad sign, but still.

For future situations, it may be good to change your Windows power settings so that power button = system shutdown (not sleep. hibernate or power off). Then when you are in a situation like that, you may tap the power button briefly to see if your Windows shuts down graciously. If not ie. the system is really stuck, you can press the power button longer to do a power off.

On top of that, you should disable "fast startup", to make sure that in the above case, the system really goes to system shutdown, and not that stupid semi-hibernate mode known as "fast startup". Not sure, when coming back from the semi-hibernate mode, the issue causing the black screen might still be active.

https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1031533/

Either way you will lose any unsaved document changes, but that is life. There are two possible fixes for your unsaved documents problem:

1. Learn to save your documents regularly, maybe enabling auto-save for them if possible. When you leave an edited document, you should always save it at that point.

2. Remove Windows and install Linux, and enable the openssh server on your Linux system. I have been in such a "black screen, can't do shit"-situation a couple of times also in Linux where some stuck process or application has caused problems, so I've just connected to that Linux system from another PC using ssh, checked with "top" and "ps -ef" which application or process seems to be stuck or using all the (CPU) resources, and killed it with e.g. "kill -9 <process-ID>".

That has made the Linux system responsive again, and all my unsaved documents are intact, unless they were related to that stuck application/process. No idea how one could do the same in Windows or is it even possible. Having RDP running and hoping it lets you in, or is there a way to connect to non-GUI Windows from elsewhere?
Post edited September 17, 2020 by timppu
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Craig234: I lost a number of unsaved files by having to power-off.
Wait, you actually (and deliberately) played a game while having unsaved files in the background?!? Perhaps you've learned something now :P

Yes and no, games themselves might not hang a computer as Windows controls and delegates all resources, games merely "ask" to get indirect access. If anything, blame MS for not retaining some compatibility with older games and for serious bugs.
Post edited September 17, 2020 by sanscript
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DreamedArtist: This should help if you get that problem when some games hard crash your desktop

To add a virtual desktop, open up the new Task View pane by clicking the Task View button (two overlapping rectangles) on the taskbar, or by pressing the Windows Key + Tab. In the Task View pane, click New desktop to add a virtual desktop. If you have two or more desktops already open, the "Add a desktop" button will appear as a gray tile with a plus symbol. You can also quickly add a desktop without entering the Task View pane by using the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + Ctrl + D.

You can switch to new desktop and end task of the old one escaping this issue. give it a shot next time.
That won't work because on Windows they all share the same (sub)system for 1 desktop (it isn't designed for more, unlike Linux), as in not separate, if one crashes they all crashes. Virtual desktops are only used to get the illusion of having more (organized) space to have open programs on, or to stamp post-it notes on.

However, the later Windows versions have (possibly taken from Linux) mechanisms in place to hinder that a thread or resource takes up the whole system ans so a ctrl-alt-del should "always" be available, sometimes it even actively kills the thread/resource that is hanging.

But, in a Windows environment, these things doesn't always work. :D
Post edited September 17, 2020 by sanscript
It could very well just be that the screen got stuck. Happened to me in a ton of games. Everything seemingly freezes, but the system still works in the background, only the screen does not respond.

If you can blindly navigate to task manager and kill the process, it often solves it. Example:
Game stuck - CTRL+SHIFT+ESC - press the first letter of the name of the game process (which selects it) - press DELETE to kill it. Could be problematic when multiple processes begin with the same letter, but at that point you've got nothing to lose so just close them one by one until you hit the stuck game. A good last resort option to try before proceeding to reset or shut down.

But yeah, in Win 10, if the CTR+ALT+DELETE screen does not show up, it is usually a sign of a system error or freeze, still can try the task manager method, but unlikely to work.
Post edited September 17, 2020 by idbeholdME
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Craig234: I'm rather furious at gog. I ran a game in my library, and it completely hung my computer - a black screen, no ctrl-alt-delete, no alt-tab, no clt-f4, just a power shutdown. It's not the first game to do this.
While it may seem like GOG or DEV are at fault, it often isn't the case.
PCs are not Gaming consoles, so they have a lot of variables, including impacts from things like your AV.
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Craig234: I expect gog to provide some quality control. If I'm running Windows 10 64-bit, as I am, games should not do this.

If they DO need something to be done to prevent the hang, the game should make that VERY clear and not run without informing the player and until they're done.
While things have indeed improved in the modern age, there are still no guarantees. Hardware variability and software (drivers etc) always make it a challenge for developers. As you may be able to appreciate, Developers and GOG don't own every PC produced, so they often use educated guesses about how things will work on various hardware and software combos etc.
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Craig234: I lost a number of unsaved files by having to power-off.
What unsaved files? Did you have something else running while playing a game?
While modern PCs allow you to get away with a lot, it is still not recommended to do so, and can definitely have an impact.
Only game I have had that with is Dungeon Siege (Steam), but its a thing with that game for some configurations.

I had to create a new user, then switch to that user to kill the game in task mgr.
Very frustrating.
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Cadaver747: Is it related to GameUX maybe, hah?
That looks like a thread about something in Windows 7, that isn't in Windows 10?
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jsidhu762: This sounds like a problem I had not too long ago. I would go AFK, and I come back to find my PC with a black screen and was unresponsive. The screen went black in place of an actual screen saver, but was impossible to restore, short of a cold reset. Try turning this off. It worked for me.
Thanks, but it's not trigged by a screensaver, it's upon running the program.
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F1ach: Only game I have had that with is Dungeon Siege (Steam), but its a thing with that game for some configurations.

I had to create a new user, then switch to that user to kill the game in task mgr.
Very frustrating.
For what it's worth, I can run Dungeon Siege fine.
Post edited September 18, 2020 by Craig234
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Craig234: That looks like a thread about something in Windows 7, that isn't in Windows 10?
My bad that issue was removed in Windows 10 build long ago.
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Cadaver747: Is it related to GameUX maybe, hah?
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Craig234: That looks like a thread about something in Windows 7, that isn't in Windows 10?
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jsidhu762: This sounds like a problem I had not too long ago. I would go AFK, and I come back to find my PC with a black screen and was unresponsive. The screen went black in place of an actual screen saver, but was impossible to restore, short of a cold reset. Try turning this off. It worked for me.
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Craig234: Thanks, but it's not trigged by a screensaver, it's upon running the program.
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F1ach: Only game I have had that with is Dungeon Siege (Steam), but its a thing with that game for some configurations.

I had to create a new user, then switch to that user to kill the game in task mgr.
Very frustrating.
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Craig234: For what it's worth, I can run Dungeon Siege fine.
Yeah probably just my config, when I tried to sort it out I found it was pretty intermittant and most people had no problem.
Its no big deal, It was more nostalgia than quality made me want to play it again :)
Post edited September 18, 2020 by F1ach
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F1ach:
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Cadaver747:
Long lost relatives finally reunited? The Nameless One and his beige cousin? :D
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idbeholdME: Game stuck - CTRL+SHIFT+ESC - press the first letter of the name of the game process (which selects it) - press DELETE to kill it. Could be problematic when multiple processes begin with the same letter, but at that point you've got nothing to lose so just close them one by one until you hit the stuck game. A good last resort option to try before proceeding to reset or shut down.
You can type more letters of the process name, not just the first. Or, to have a much smaller list, Shift+Tab and then back arrow to get to applications, then hit Tab again to move focus to the list.
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idbeholdME: Game stuck - CTRL+SHIFT+ESC - press the first letter of the name of the game process (which selects it) - press DELETE to kill it. Could be problematic when multiple processes begin with the same letter, but at that point you've got nothing to lose so just close them one by one until you hit the stuck game. A good last resort option to try before proceeding to reset or shut down.
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Cavalary: You can type more letters of the process name, not just the first. Or, to have a much smaller list, Shift+Tab and then back arrow to get to applications, then hit Tab again to move focus to the list.
That sounds like it might be the case, but that invisible task manager sounds a little crazy. Might be worth a try.