Many games turn my dual screens black then freeze - help!

[Ampa]

For months I've experienced this issue and never found an answer: so time to ask the DC community!

When many games try to go fullscreen both of my dual screens go black and the system freezes.

I can't hit escape, alt+tab, win+tab, ctrl+alt+del, win+pause/break, win+d

The only way to get out of this situation is to hit the power or reset button and reboot.

A few examples… Games that run just fine All games in my Steam library Batman Arkham Asylum Civ V Perspective Games that black screen Flight Control HD Gatling Gears OIO Qrth-Phyl Master of Alchemy Super Hexagon I can see no connection between those games that work and those that don't.

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One way to get around the issue is to run offending games in a window, and if they don't offer that option to run them in a sandbox (such as the Comodo Firewall sandbox or SandIE) which forces them into a window.

Gfx Driver: Catalyst 13.1
Gfx Card: Radeon HD5770
Screen Res: 1280x1024 both screens.
OS: Win7 x64

Does anyone have any thoughts about what is going on? The situation is driving me mad!

Thanks

[Ampa]

Ah-ha! I may have found the answer myself... seems to be the Defense+ component of Comodo Firewall causing the problem - it is asking me to create a rule for the new game I am running, but the dialogue box is trapped behind the fullscreen application with no way to retrieve it!

And just discovered that Comodo Firewall does contain a manually enabled Game Mode that solves this issue, though I've not discovered HOW it solves the issue!

[Tinman57]

  If your playing these games offline, you can RMC on Comodo Firewall and set Sandbox Security Level and Defense + Security levels to Disable, and Firewall Security Level to Block All, and then exit Comodo Firewall.  The front-end of Comodo will exit but will keep a portion of itself running in the background to block all incoming and outgoing transmissions.  You can now disable your anti-virus since the internet is blocked.  Whenever your done gaming, re-enable your anti-virus, run Comodo Firewall again and change the Sandbox, Defense and Firewall Security Level back to it's original settings.  Now your ready to surf again.  If you have a Network not working error of any kind, just RMC and select "Repair" and it will refresh your network.  This is the best way to play graphic/cpu intensive offline games and give yourself more RAM to work with as well.