Skyrim minimizing on startup?

[MarkG]

OK, this is weird.

I’ve been running Skyrim in VorpX for months. But, in the last couple of days, it’s stopped working. When I start the game, I get the ‘TESV.exe is taking a while to start up’ message, then a brief flash of black and a brief clip of sound, then Skyrim minimizes itself and stops working.

Works perfectly in 2D, but as soon as I start VorpX, it wants to minimize on startup. Happens whether I run with or without mods.

Any ideas what might be causing this all of a sudden? Could my VorpX settings be screwed up somehow, so VorpX shuts the game down? I tried the ‘reset to defaults’ from VorpX Control, but it made no difference.

About all I can think of is to delete Skyrim and get Steam to install it again. But nothing should have changed there in a long time.

[MarkG]

BTW, it’s also specific to Skyrim: I tried L4D2 in VorpX, and that still works fine.

[MarkG]

I did a complete reinstall of Skyrim through Steam, and it made no difference. One thing I noticed is that Skyrim starts up in VorpX if set to windowed mode (but then the head tracking doesn’t work correctly). It won’t start up if set to full-screen, but minimizes itself as soon as VorpX tries to switch to VR.

I’ll try reinstalling VorpX and see if that makes any difference.

It’s as though VorpX is trying to put up a dialogue box or something, but there’s no dialogue box.

[Ralf]

Not sure why that may happen, but can’t you switch back to the game with ALT+TAB when it occurs? Another option would be to check whether running the game windowed makes a difference.

[MarkG]

Yeah, as I said, it starts up in windowed mode with VorpX, but the head tracking is broken (I’m guessing it’s moving the virtual mouse outside the window). It starts in full-screen without VorpX, but won’t with VorpX running.

If I ALT+TAB back, I just get a black screen on the monitor and nothing else. I’ve never found Skyrim very happy about switching away and back again.

Is there some kind of VorpX debug log I can check? I looked in the likely places and didn’t find one.

Also, it was working early last week, and I don’t know of anything that would have changed since then, except for Oculus updating to 1.11.

[Ralf]

Try ALT TAB twice, and or click in the window. The game behaves a bit odd with ALT TAB, but eventually it should work.

[MarkG]

So, I tried Skyrim again today for the first time in ages, and now it’s magically working. I wonder whether it was a problem with the 1.11 Oculus software?

[zenman53186]

I am having a similar (but it doesn’t seem exact) problem with SkyrimSE. Starting Vorpx, starting SkyrimSE from inside Steam (“Play”) – the Launcher comes up. Press “Play” on the Launcher…Launcher exits and then restarts. I never get to the game when using Vorpx. Works in 2D (normal mode) fine. I’m running the latest SkyrimSE (steam updates automatically) and Oculus (also updates automatically).

Any chance your problem has returned?

[nieda113]

Hi have u checked ur .ini and prefs.ini settings? I found recently a additional pref .ini in a folder named Skyrim in my skyrim data directory.
Further u can make the .ini files read only after changing the resolution in ur inis.. ENB enblocal.ini can do this, too.
Maybe some mods are overwriting those.

[MarkG]

I haven’t tried Skyrim SE, only the original Skyrim.

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