I use facebook chat/skype a lot and I was wondering if there was a way I could minimize dosbox or a windows game window with the keyboard without ctrl+alt+del, which seems to crash my games a lot. Even if I play a windowed version of dosbox, it locks the cursor on that window, and I can't leave it without going to task manager. Is there a keyboard shortcut or something I can do to minimize the game, or switch programs or something? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried hitting left alt+escape?

Plain ol' Alt-Tab? Or maybe I'm not understanding the question.

Alt+Tab, or Alt+Enter...

Not sure if it would work, but Win+M might work too (For Minimize all windows)

Alt-Tab sounds like what you want, depending on your operating system Windows-Tab could work too. You can also use AutoHotkey to create keyboard shortcuts if nothing suites you.

CTRL-F10 captures/releases the mouse in DOSBox. You should be able to use the Keymapper to change the hotkey to something more convenient if you're going to use it a lot.

And of course ALT-Enter toggles between fullscreen and windowed mode in DOSBox, so if you want to play fullscreen you should be able to hit ALT-Enter and then release the cursor to do something else, and just click on the DOSBox window when you want it to capture your cursor again.

Do you have a key with the Windows logo on your keyboard? I just press that and it automatically goes to a smaller window and lets me use my mouse anywhere.

For native Windows games you can usually task switch by going to windowed mode first (in the settings or with Alt+Enter, depending on the game); games that crash on switching from fullscreen mode will usually switch correctly while in windowed mode. A few older games lock the focus on the game window or do other unpleasant things when trying to switch away from the game so for those cases there's not much you can do.

Some new releases include a borderless fullscreen mode in the settings; this looks like regular fullscreen mode but allows for seamless switching like the regular windowed mode.