Alt+Tab is known to crash the game on ATI cards, and the Windows key is effectively an Alt+Tab.

There's a file called debug.err in your My Documents\My Games\Elemental folder. You should post that to a site like pastebin and link to it here. That helps the devs fix it.

Yep.  It's exceptionally annoying that Stardock still has this issue.  I say "still", because GC2 has similar problems.  If you alt+tab out of the game you're very likely to not make it back.  They never did fix it for GC2 in all that time, so I'm not hopeful that they will for Elemental either.

Somehow SD manages to use DirectX differently from every other developer on the planet, because GC2 and Elemental are the ONLY games I've played that seem to have this problem with ATI cards.  :/

Overall, going back to GC2, I'm very disappointed with how this has been handled.

Windows Key works now after updating to Catalyst version 10.8 released yesterday.

Thx for the hint in the other cdt thread

// thread here can be closed

I think the problem should be solved for me after the Catalyste update from yesterday.

The error log is relates to the failor before the update.

link: http://pastebin.ca/1927557

Some lines have been delete for privacy reasons.

If you refer with "sluggishness" to slowdowns, then you may try one of the workarounds that has been proposed on the Paradox Hoi3 forum.

*Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance (Settings) -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory (Change) -> No paging file

Be aware that this can cause unexpected software failors and should not be done with less than 2 Gb of RAM.

You can also try this one:

1. Restrict Elemental.exe to a single core (dual or quad core machines only)
*CTRL-ALT-DEL -> Processes -> Rick click Elemental.exe (it must already be running) -> Set Affinity, to a single core (1 for dual core, 3 for quad) (the highest core is the least used by other processes).

HoI3 appears to be a single threaded application, a lot of the lag I was experiencing was due to thrashing of that single thread back and forth between my two processor cores. Setting this each time you play the game will help to reduce that thrashing.


2. Set Elemental.exe to high priority, in the task manager right click Elemental.exe again and click High Priority. Realtime priority may interfere with device drivers and cause mouse or keyboard lag.

Perform steps 2 and 3 after you first start the game and are still in the game menu.