Alt-tab freezing needs to be fixed

So apparently this issue has now been fixed according to this report. After an update in mid September I finally stopped experiencing this issue but only now they claim it’s been fixed today.

Can anyone who has recently been suffering with this issue check and see if it has been fixed for you?

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So the original accepted report has already been forgotten. Someone created a new report a month ago. It was accepted at the same time and fixed after a month.
Maybe we should start writing reports in Russian?

It’s what I’m thinking from now on. Any issues just write the report and chuck it through google translate.

Seems to be the best way of getting anything fixed.

My original report got a response within 6 months, but the russian report gets a response in under 2 hours.

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There is only one thing that was different in my case. The game would freeze after alt-tabbing several times, but it never recovered or displayed any error message. I simply had to close it via Task Manager.

Not sure when I’ll check it, though. I haven’t been playing much War Thunder recently.

This is what was happening to me and what I said in my report, the game had to be force closed via task manager.

(re-typing, accidentally deleted the first post)

Hello! I am a developer on the engine team, and we think this bug is not fixed yet, despite one of the possible causes being fixed. And we need your help.

Are you still able to reproduce the issue? If so, are you willing to collaborate with us to collect as much data about the issue as possible and help us fix it?

This question is for anyone who has this issue now, or has found a workaround but can still reproduce it.

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Hey, thanks for reaching out to us directly on the forum!

From my side, I can say that none of the in-game tools show any issues with the game.
The logs generated after manually closing the game via Task Manager do not show any errors or freezes—they only indicate that the game was closed. This is simply because the game freezes entirely and cannot be closed any other way.
The only clues are left in the Windows Event Viewer.
I included such clues in my report about this issue, as well as in other reports regarding this problem.
Here is a report from one of the users, where I described my observations using WinDbg and Windows Event Viewer:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/NTpoed65SzSl

https://community.gaijin.net/p/warthunder/i/NTpoed65SzSl?comment=Y9JzaCwzyGvWJ7hUlYf3Oko0
https://community.gaijin.net/p/warthunder/i/NTpoed65SzSl?comment=cWpPUe2Acerp7IQFxsF2KGqr
https://community.gaijin.net/p/warthunder/i/NTpoed65SzSl?comment=LCMxktJD549DhDETcWGEzj6y
https://community.gaijin.net/p/warthunder/i/NTpoed65SzSl?comment=nsf2UmarQ6ge4ijux24cz7GH

That was about 7 months ago. Since then, I stopped playing so intensively and encountered this issue less frequently.
I also don’t remember if I had this problem over the last month—I simply haven’t played enough. I’ve also stopped tracking logs and Event Viewer. When I get the chance, I’ll check if the issue is still happening on my end and try to provide as much data on it as possible.

Well, I found an old Event log. Maybe it will be helpful:
aces.zip (32,3 KB)

Hello hhf232,

I have the same issue, BUT using Bazzite (Linux 7.2.9) distro, KDE Plasma 6.7.5
Every time I use ALT+TAB while in a game or even in the hangar, the game freezes 90% of the time and can’t return to normal, this is followed by a crash, with the option to submit a report.
I’m in fullscreen mode.

The logs:
2026_10_15_17_28_16__166127.rar (1,8 Mo)

When I play War Thunder, I have the following programs open:

  • Discord
  • My web browser

Feel free to send me a private message on the forum if you’d like more informations

For me the issue got resolved during one of the patches made to the live server around the same time that the last dev server was running. Since then I haven’t had the issue.

However weirdly enough during the launch of Aces of Thunder the issue was happening there until they released a patch soon after which also resolved that issue.

If you encounter the issue, could you please do the following:

  • Find the hung process in Task Manager
  • Choose Create memory dump file in the right-click menu
  • Find the generated .dmp file (it is usually in AppData\Local\Temp) and save it
  • Wait for the game to crash (it should after some time hanging) for the report to be generated.

I will write a bit later about how to send us this file.

This way, we can get more context about the state of the process and hopefully diagnose and fix this issue.

Thank you for your feedback!

From what I remember, it wasn’t possible to create a memory dump—at least not from the aces.exe file.

I think I have a memory dump, but from the WinDbg tool. However, these files are from the beginning of the year when I was creating the bug reports.

I will try checking your crash dump from the issue, and I am also going to look into why you can’t make a proper dump from aces.exe

Also, for sharing dumps:

For protection of your privacy (since you are sending contents of your memory), you should encrypt the file before sending.

How::

To get the PUBLIC_KEY, write to me in private messages on the forum and I’ll give it to you
DUMP_NAME is the name of the generated dump

After that, send the encrypted file however you like.

Also, to write the dump, you need to run the game from launcher, not from steam.

For that, go to the game location: steam > Library > War Thunder > Properties > Installed Files > Browse
And double click on launcher.exe , then run the game from the launcher

After that, you’ll be able to create a dump for aces.exe

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any Dump files on my drive. There are only some Dump files attached to my old bug report: Community Bug Reporting System

It seems the issue no longer occurs on my end. While playing yesterday, I used ALT+TAB quite often, and the game didn’t freeze once.

As for the game’s memory dump, the generated DMP file is 0 bytes, so I likely faced the exact same problem when the game was freezing a few months ago. The only way to capture a dump was to launch WinDbg and debug the game until the freeze occurred.

I should also mention that I’m not using the Steam version, but the standalone launcher.

When the game froze, the screen remained completely frozen, but game audio (like tank or aircraft engines) was still playing. The mouse cursor wouldn’t move, and the game didn’t respond to keyboard input, including ALT+F4. The only way to close the frozen game was through Task Manager. After closing it this way, no crash or error window appeared.

Can you send me the latest .clog file from (war thunder installation folder)/.game_logs ? (Your last run needs to end in a freeze => crash)

Does anyone currently have this issue on windows (preferrably windows 11 with DX11)?

I do, though it has gotten noticeably better since a few updates ago.

Specs

OS: Windows 11
Graphics API: DX11
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
RAM: 16GB DDR4
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060

Since the improvement, my game freezes every now and then when I alt-tab, more often when other programs are running—in-game situation is irrelevant (freezing happens just often in the hanger as in matches)—but has happened more than once when no other programs are running.

Most of the freezes can be immediately solved by changing to a different application and back. The game still functions during these freezes in the sense that it is just a visual freeze.

However, sometimes the game will freeze, whatever audio tracks was last playing will continue to loop regardless of whether I’m tabbed-out or not, and the game will hang like that for consistently over 20 seconds before becoming playable again, and can happen back-to-back. In these cases, the message “Video driver hung and was restarted. Texture quality was reduced”

Rarely it will be so bad that the opens an error box about a freeze being detected, and when I click “OK” it closes the game. No amount of waiting during one of these makes it unfreeze.

I hope at least some of this helps! :3

The condition that I am particularly interested in this case is the one where it hangs completely for a while before the message about the video driver.

Is it possible for you to:

  • Run the game from launcher (not steam), and repro the hang (open more apps, mashing win key after alt-tabbing in and out can also help cause the hang)
  • Once it freezes, make a full memory dump as described in my earlier post
  • Write to me in private messages here and I’ll give you a public key to encrypt and send the dump

This would be very helpful to us!

…I was unable to capture it.
I had multiple streams open, watching videos, in custom battles and switching windows multiple times per second, and it only appeared once, and I was too slow to capture it…