Straight answer: most games crash when you minimise them because they're running in exclusive fullscreen mode, which locks the GPU to that single application. Switch the game's display setting to borderless windowed (sometimes called "windowed fullscreen") and the crash almost always stops for good. Everything else people tell you, like pressing Alt+Tab faster or updating drivers, is a bandage on the actual problem.
Why the crash happens in the first place
When a game runs in exclusive fullscreen, it takes total control of your graphics card. That's normally a good thing, it's what gives you the extra few frames per second and lower input lag that competitive players chase. But it means Windows and the GPU have made a private arrangement that excludes everything else on your desktop.
When you minimise a fullscreen game, Windows has to yank control of the GPU back so it can render your desktop. That handover involves reallocating video memory on the fly. Older engines built on DirectX 9 or DirectX 11 in exclusive mode often don't handle that handover cleanly. The result is a black screen, a freeze, or a full crash to desktop. This is why it's always the same handful of games that get named in forums, things like Elden Ring, GTA V, and older Call of Duty titles, because they were built around exclusive fullscreen as the default.
The fix that works
Change the display mode inside the game itself. Most games have this under Settings, Display, or Video, labelled as "Display Mode" or "Screen Mode". You want to move it from Fullscreen to Borderless or Windowed Fullscreen. Here's the process step by step:
- Open the game and go into its options menu, not the Windows settings.
- Find the display or video tab.
- Change Display Mode from Fullscreen to Borderless (or Windowed).
- Apply the change, then try minimising with the Windows key or Alt+Tab.
- If the option isn't in the menu, try Alt+Enter while the game is running, which toggles display mode in a large number of PC titles built on Unreal Engine or Unity.
Borderless mode runs the game inside a window with no visible frame, sized to match your monitor exactly, so it looks identical to fullscreen but behaves like any other app when you switch away from it. You'll typically lose somewhere between 2 and 8 frames per second compared to true exclusive fullscreen, depending on your GPU. For almost everyone, that trade is worth never seeing another crash.
What to do if the game has no borderless option
Some older or budget titles don't offer a borderless setting. In that case:
- Right-click the game's shortcut or.exe file, choose Properties, then Compatibility.
- Tick "Disable fullscreen optimisations". This forces Windows to manage the display handover differently and stops a lot of the black-screen crashes on minimise.
- Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), find the game process, right-click it and set Priority to Above Normal rather than High. High priority can starve Windows Explorer of resources during the switch and make crashes worse, not better.
- Update your GPU driver through the manufacturer's own tool, not just Windows Update. Nvidia and AMD both push game-specific fixes that Windows Update doesn't carry.
- Use the Xbox Game Bar (Win+G) to check performance overlay before minimising, since a game already running near its VRAM ceiling is far more likely to crash on the handover.
A worked example
Say you run a small marketing consultancy from home and you also stream a couple of hours of gaming on a Tuesday evening as a bit of extra income on the side. Your client calls come through Teams on the same PC you game on. Mid-session, a client messages and you need to minimise the game fast to jump on a call. If that game is running in exclusive fullscreen, there's a real chance it crashes the moment you hit the Windows key, and now you're staring at a black screen while your client waits, or worse, restarting the PC live on stream.
The fix in that scenario isn't a faster reflex on Alt+Tab, it's going into the game's video settings before the stream starts and setting Display Mode to Borderless once, permanently. That one setting change removes the entire risk, rather than you hoping for the best every time you need to switch tasks quickly.
The uncomfortable bit nobody selling you a "fix" wants to admit
A lot of the advice floating around forums treats minimising as something you can force through with enough tweaking, registry edits, third-party overlay tools, or turning off every background app. Most of that does very little. The actual mechanism causing the crash is the GPU memory handover in exclusive fullscreen mode, and no amount of closing Chrome tabs changes that mechanism. If you're still on exclusive fullscreen, you are gambling every single time you minimise, and the odds don't improve with more RAM or a faster CPU. The only variable that reliably changes the outcome is the display mode setting itself.
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There's a second uncomfortable point worth saying plainly: minimising during a competitive online match, even successfully and without a crash, can flag you as AFK in some ranked systems and cost you the match anyway. So the crash isn't always the worst outcome of minimising, being penalised by the game's own anti-idle system is the other risk nobody mentions when they're telling you how to "safely tab out".
Windows-level settings worth checking
Beyond the game itself, two Windows settings matter:
- Under Settings, System, Display, Graphics, you can set the game's specific "GPU preference" to High Performance rather than letting Windows decide, which reduces the chance of a mid-switch stutter.
- Turn off "Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling" temporarily if you're on an older GPU driver, since this feature (turned on by default since Windows 11) occasionally conflicts with exclusive fullscreen handovers on cards from before 2019.
Neither of these replaces the borderless fix. They reduce the frequency of crashes for games stuck in exclusive fullscreen with no alternative, which is a real category of older titles still being played in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my game crash every time I press the Windows key but not when I press Alt+Tab?
The Windows key triggers a full desktop redraw including the Start menu, which demands more from the GPU handover than Alt+Tab's simpler window switch. If a game is stable on Alt+Tab but crashes on Win, that's a strong sign it's in exclusive fullscreen and needs switching to borderless.
Does borderless windowed mode hurt my frame rate a lot?
Usually not much. On a mid-range GPU expect a drop of roughly 2 to 8 frames per second compared to true exclusive fullscreen. For most single-player games and even most competitive shooters, that's not noticeable enough to justify the crash risk of staying in fullscreen.
Will disabling fullscreen optimisations in Windows fix the crash on its own?
It helps in some cases but it isn't a full fix. It changes how Windows manages the compatibility layer around fullscreen apps, which can reduce crashes, but switching the game's own display mode to borderless remains the more reliable fix because it removes the exclusive GPU lock entirely.
Is it safe to minimise games during online multiplayer matches?
Technically yes if you're in borderless mode, but check the game's own rules first. Several competitive titles treat a minimised window as inactivity and can flag or penalise you even if the game itself never crashes.
