Title:
WoW Freezes or Reloads After Alt-Tab on Windows 11 24H2 with “Optimizations for windowed games” Enabled
Summary:
After upgrading to Windows 11 24H2, alt-tabbing out of WoW (in borderless windowed mode) may cause the game to freeze for several seconds, become unresponsive, or fully reload the world as if restarted. In some cases, the taskbar icon briefly disappears and reappears.
Cause:
This issue occurs when Windows 11’s “Optimizations for windowed games” feature is enabled. The change forces Flip Model presentation, which appears to conflict with WoW’s “Frame Overlap” setting (System > Graphics > Compatibility Settings).
When combined, these settings can trigger a GPU hang or device reset during alt-tab transitions.
Workaround:
Disable both of the following:
Optimizations for windowed games (Windows 11 settings)
Go to: Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Default Settings section
Toggle Optimizations for windowed games to Off
Auto HDR must be off to access this setting
Frame Overlap (WoW Graphics Settings)
Go to: System > Graphics > Compatibility Settings
Uncheck Frame Overlap
No other graphics settings need to be changed.
Applies To:
Windows 11 version 24H2
WoW running in borderless windowed mode
Systems with no prior issues before 24H2
Most commonly triggered by alt-tabbing to desktop or other apps
If you aren’t on Windows 11 24H2 or don’t use borderless mode, this workaround is likely unnecessary.
If you see a line like this in your _retail_\Logs\gx.log file, you’re probably dealing with the same thing I was:
5/12 14:48:01.430 [0] Error WaitForSingleObjectEx Timeout: The wait operation timed out. (0x80070102).
5/12 14:48:01.430 [0] Device Removed Reason: GPU Hung. Timeout when waiting for queue: Direct (0x80070102) count:1
Im experiencing the same but already tried only uncheck frame overlap and didnt work. Will try to disable windowed games optimization aswell. What happens If u only uncheck one of the 2 suggestions u gave? Dont work Just like on my experience?
I did what you suggested and will let you all know. I notice it especially when tabbing in and out of game with discord’s window open. I wasn’t sure if it was just a Win11 issue, a Blizz issue or a discord issue (or a combo of all 3)
I finally found a fix that took care of this issue completely. I’ve been dealing with it for months at this point.
There is a service called SSDPSRV. I forget the particulars of what it does but if you turn it off the problem goes away. You find it in the services tab of your task manager. Once you’ve disabled it for your current session you can right click on the service and “Open Services”, and then scroll down to SSDP Discovery, where you can set its startup function to disabled. I still had it turn on upon startup, but I’m hoping that was a fluke. Nonetheless, I’m happy to turn it off every reset for the sake of this problem being gone.
Here’s the description from its properties page:
“Discovers networked devices and services that use the SSDP discovery protocol, such as UPnP devices. Also announces SSDP devices and services running on the local computer. If this service is stopped, SSDP-based devices will not be discovered. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.”
These placebo fixes don’t do anything anymore and haven’t done anything for several years now. OP’s ChatGPT summary is based on old data in the training dataset and the SSDP discovery fix hasn’t done anything in years either and was always more of a placebo fix than anything.
Close out of all external apps, including your browser, Discord(which now has overlays enabled by default and if you had them turned off in the past, they are enabled again now; as of a few months ago), as well as any mouse/keyboard/RGB lighting softwares since they almost always have overlays, then reboot the game.
This is an overlay issue and they don’t even have to be displaying anything to cause problems, just being enabled is enough to inject themselves into MPOs and other systems responsible for rendering and displaying a frame on your screen.