I have noticed since the latest blizzard launcher update that when I open the blizzard launcher, click Diablo 3, and then click Play game, that my game will launch, go through auth, and then land on character selection screen. Then when I click start game, The start game waiting screen appears, and then as the game should be starting, the window closes and I am looking at my PCs desktop with the blizzard launcher still open. The play button still says Playing Now and is not clickable. There is also no Diablo 3 icon in my tool bar. The program is still running, but the only way to bring the program back to the focus of the PC is to open the Task Manager, expand the Diablo application, and then click bring to front. This happens every time I start a game, or leave a game. I have performed ALL of the suggested fixes for this issue. My PC and all drivers are up to date. And I deleted the battle.net folder and reinstalled the game. The only reason I think it could be a bug is because I haven’t had this until right after the blizzard launcher update that happened in mid July or so. I can attach screen shots if someone would like.
I have a similar issue. Sometimes it clears up, but it always comes back. I never figured out what causes it. However, I recently found out how to avoid the issue. I’m not sure it will work for you.
Are you playing in Fullscreen? If so, change the in-game video options to Windowed (Fullscreen).
In my case, when this happens, my D3Prefs.txt file does not update either. I had to manually change it to run in Windowed (Fullscreen). Otherwise, I had to change it in the Game Options every time I ran the game.
You can find the D3Prefs.txt file in your Documents folder, in the Diablo III subfolder. Open it with something like NotePad and look for the line that says: DisplayModeWindowMode “0”. Change it to DisplayModeWindowMode “2” for Windowed (Fullscreen). Note: This is not necessary if your D3Prefs.txt is updating properly.
For several years now, I have had to lock my d3prefs.txt file to prevent it from getting changed by the game. Also, I have several of them for different configurations.
If you want to manually alter a setting, but also prevent the game from changing it back later, you can open the file properties on d3prefs.txt, and set it to “Read Only”.
That will prevent D3 from changing your settings.
For example:
- If you frequently change the volume in-game, but you want it to always start at a certain level.
- If you want to have 2 shortcuts on the desktop that bypass the Launcher. One that opens the game in windowed, and one that opens the game in fullscreen.
- If you want to be able to run 2 games at once. One with low level graphics, to save on cpu/gpu resources, and one at high level graphics.
- etc.
Not really addressing the OP’s issue, but maybe it someone will find the information useful.
Super …Same here!