Games will not stay open in fullscreen mode

My laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad with a 4k monitor. I play games on it at 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Recently I plugged a monitor in to play games on that via HDMI. It is also a 4k monitor, but again, I played in 1920 x 1080 res.

When I disconnected the monitor to play again on the laptop, games will not stay open in fullscreen mode. I have tried three different games. I can play them in Windowed and Windowed Fullscreen, but not in Fullscreen mode. When I switch a game to fullscreen, the screen flickers a couple of times and the game is minimized to the taskbar.

How can I fix this? (reinstalling the games and rebooting the laptop did not resolve the issue.)

have you checked windows settings? Goto settings/System/Display/Scale and layout. Make sure all settings there fit your screen.
Scale should be 100%, display resolution should be at the 1920 x 1080 etc..

My system resolution is set to the monitor's resolution of 3840 x 2160 and scaled at 200%. Both say "Recommended" next to the setting. It's always been set to those values and I've never changed them.

The behavior I described above only started after I disconnected the external monitor and tried to play on the laptop's monitor again.

mercury_1967 said:

My system resolution is set to the monitor's resolution of 3840 x 2160 and scaled at 200%. Both say "Recommended" next to the setting. It's always been set to those values and I've never changed them.

The behavior I described above only started after I disconnected the external monitor and tried to play on the laptop's monitor again.

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I see. Well try setting them to 1920 x 1080 and see what happens. I understand thats not the full size that your monitors are but I did have a similar problem when my displayports went bad which I found out happen Alot i guess.

imanlien2020 said:

I see. Well try setting them to 1920 x 1080 and see what happens. I understand thats not the full size that your monitors are but I did have a similar problem when my displayports went bad which I found out happen Alot i guess.

Click to expand...

I set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 and tested a game and it ran fine, but that's not really an optimal solution.

I'm hoping someone can suggest something that will allow me to use the native resolution again.

Check to see if Windows is still trying to project to the monitor that you disconnected ([Win} + [P]).

Also, try reconnecting the monitor, run the game, put it in windowed mode, then move it manually to your laptop monitor, and then switch back to the full screen. After doing all this with all the games giving you issues, finally, disconnect the monitor.

FWIW - this is a built in 'feature' of Windows 11, whereby it minimizes the apps that were on another display when that display is no longer present.

An alternate way would be to start the game, hit [ALT] + [ENTER] with it running and focused (which may be hard for you do since it keeps minimizing), and then use the [Win] key plus the arrows to move it to your built-in display. The above may work, but the larger rigmarole of connecting the monitor and moving each game should work no matter what.

HTH