Just installed, exiting fullscreen breaks stuff.

[AliCat]

Hey everyone, I'm new to Dolphin and having some issues with the fullscreen feature. I've tried looking up solutions already and haven't found much, so I thought I'd make an account here and see if anyone here knows anything about this. I remember seeing another forum post suggesting this might have to do with intel integrated graphics drivers in some way? But they didn't give any suggestions on how to solve it.

Basically, the games run fine in fullscreen, but if I press Alt+Enter to exit fullscreen everything gets a little broken. The display gets pushed down to the bottom left of the screen, everything else goes black and unclickable, and I'm unable to exit back to my desktop except by opening the task manager for some reason (though I don't need to force quit the game, just opening it seems to bring me back to my desktop). I've attached a photograph of my monitor below, since screenshotting it just captures my desktop instead? This issue happens consistently, and other usual button combinations like Alt+Tab and Win+D do not do anything both while it's buggy like this and when playing in fullscreen normally. Clicking back on the game after opening Task Manager opens it in a little draggable window that looks like the attached screenshot. It doesn't move past that frame, though there are sounds and it seems to allow inputs. This effectively leaves the game unplayable until completely restarting it through Dolphin.

Basically if I go fullscreen the rest of my pc becomes unusable until I press CTRL+ALT+DEL, which breaks the emulator and forces me to run it again from the title screen, which is frustrating since I like to have other things running in the background. After having this problem for a bit I tried messing with some of Dolphin's resolution and fullscreen settings, none have changed anything so far but I just might not have tried the right settings? And besides I'd rather not click around and mess with too many things when I don't understand them ^^" So does anybody know why it does this or what I could try? I'd be really appreciative towards anyone willing to provide any amount of help at this point, thanks in advance to anybody who responds to this : )

   
   

[One More Try]

Try options -> hotkey settings and set a hotkey for "toggle fullscreen", then use that button.

[AliCat]

Try options -> hotkey settings and set a hotkey for "toggle fullscreen", then use that button.

Just tried changing the hotkey and it gave me the same thing unfortunately, no different than if I'd used ALT+ENTER --"

Also realizing my photos aren't showing lol, at not least on my end. Just in case here's an Imgur link for future reference, for anyone who can't see: https://imgur.com/a/az7eKpE

[ExtremeDude2]

Maybe try Graphics > Advanced > Borderless Fullscreen

[AliCat]

Maybe try Graphics > Advanced > Borderless Fullscreen

Alright so apparently that was already enabled, so I tried disabling it to see what happens. Had largely the same issues though this time CTRL+ALT+DEL ing out of it did this instead lol: https://imgur.com/a/KcQAjxI

Like before the audio is playing completely fine and it reads inputs, but I need to restart the game to make it comprehensible again. Thanks for the suggestion though ?

Edit: that question mark at the end was supposed a thumbs up emoji

[MayImilae]

If you change Dolphin's internal resolution up or down, does the fullscreen image get bigger or smaller?

[AliCat]

If you change Dolphin's internal resolution up or down, does the fullscreen image get bigger or smaller?

Just tested it a bit, internal resolution doesn't seem to change anything related to this issue unfortunately. When it was pushed to the bottom corner surrounded by black, it took up the same amount of space on screen regardless of what internal resolution I tried. Same for when I back out and it goes into the tiny motionless window, all that's affected is picture quality and performance so I assume that setting's working as intended.

I DID figure out though that the size of the image seems to correspond to how large the window is stretched to be BEFORE going fullscreen the first time. When launch the game and click and drag the edges to make the window larger, then press ALT+ENT and follow the usual process, it fills up as much space in the black screen's bottom corner as the size of the window was before full screening.

Comparison of window sizes before and after exiting to my desktop using CTRL+ALT+DEL, after sizing up the window beforehand:
   

   

https://imgur.com/a/tBl97tj

[MayImilae]

Yea this definitely sounds like your graphics drivers are being awful. Unfortunately we're not super familiar with the Intel Graphics Command Center Intel Graphics Control Panel (probably for your CPU) and its options so it's hard for us to walk you through solutions. For the basics though, update your drivers if you can (not through windows update, through intel itself). Also play around with any scaling, resizing, or other options in the intel graphics control panel; there might be something dumb going on there. See if any of that gets you any changes.

EDIT: Oh and if you don't have the Intel Graphics Control Panel or Intel Graphics Command Center because Windows for whatever reason thinks that's a good idea to strip out graphics driver control applications sometimes, you'll need to redownload it to get access to scaling options. Flipping Windows update.

EDIT EDIT: Oh, another thing you can try is different graphics backends. With troublesome graphics drivers, sometimes one graphics API will just magically behave when others don't.

[mbc07]

Assuming your profile info is up-to-date, you have a Gen7-based Intel iGPU (Ivy Bridge), and it barely supports the feature set current Dolphin versions uses. Make sure you're using our Direct3D 11 backend (the only one that still works with that particular iGPU) and keep in mind you'll encounter minor graphical glitches in a few games regardless.

EDIT: Oh and if you don't have the Intel Graphics Control Panel or Intel Graphics Command Center because Windows for whatever reason thinks that's a good idea to strip out graphics driver control applications sometimes, you'll need to redownload it to get access to scaling options. Flipping Windows update.

Windows now enforces DCH driver architecture (kinda) and that means user-facing applications must be decoupled from the driver binary and offered exclusively via the Microsoft Store. So, if you don't have an active internet connection at the time you're installing the driver, the application download from Microsoft Store may not be triggered and you'll have to manually search and install the related Control Panel from it.

But, assuming OP's profile is up-to-date, that won't be the case since the last Intel driver for Gen7 iGPUs predates the DCH architecture and thus includes everything required (including the Control Panel) in the same package. I would also advise sticking with the driver offered via Windows Update instead of using the slightly newer one available from Intel's website since the latter includes a security mitigation that slaughters the performance of Gen7 iGPUs (which already weren't great to begin with)...

[AliCat]

Thank you both, this is so much info! I'll have to come back here to reread later when I've got some time to experiment. It's good to confirm at least that it's very likely not a problem with the emulator itself. I figured my PC would work fine since the games run great so far outside of fullscreen though I guess I'm not really surprised that some weird specific thing like this would bother it, the specs listed on my profile definitely aren't exactly anything to brag about xD I'll be sure to look into some of the stuff talked about here but overall I guess it's not too terrible if I just have to run my games in windowed mode. I'm planning to upgrade to something better in the next year or so so it's great to hear that this will most likely solve itself when that comes in. Plus of course I'm still glad I came here for advice instead of manually checking and unchecking every individual option myself lol. Yall've been helpful, this bug was REALLY annoying me when I found it so thanks for offering what you could : )