Alt-Tab woes?

This isn't a major problem so much as a minor annoyance. Before buying a new computer which came with Windows vista, I could alt-tab out of the full screen Guild Wars window, and do something on the desktop (ie....open browser and look at GwG or GuildWiki). Once I was finished, I could alt-tab back to the full screen Guild Wars window without a performance loss at all. In Windows Vista, if I alt-tab out of the window, and alt-tab back, it cripples my fps. It quite honestly brings the game to the point of being unplayable.

Now, I have a laptop with windows vista as well. It's newer than my Desktop, so it sports a better Processor and faster ram/hard drive. But it does not have a dedicated graphics card. I can alt-tab at a whim on my laptop with no loss of fps, or even a shutter.

So my question is, why would my desktop have problems with my laptop doesn't?

Some things I've tried:

• Turning off transparency on the desktop
• Shutting down my Antivirus/Firewall/etc
• Turning down graphic settings in Guild Wars
• Disabling desktop composition manually (editing the shortcut)
• Running the game in windowed mode.

And I get the same problem everytime. As I said it's not a problem at all on my laptop, I didn't have it on XP, and others I've talked to with vista also report no problem. Could it be that there is some stray setting that is hamstringing the whole process? Or does the difference in the two processors (Intel 1.83 Ghz x2 to AMD 2.0 ghz x2) or Ram (533 to 667) really change things that much?

What card do you have?
Have you tried updating your graphics card drivers? Also, you may want to try updating your DirectX.
Is Vista on SP1 yet? If not, you should update immediately.

My desktop card is a lowly 7600 GS but my laptop is only running a x1270 integrated chip. DirectX and video drivers are up-to-date. Early adopter of SP1.

How much RAM do you have? Also, does minimising GW (using the minimise icon, in other words) have the same effect as Alt-tabbing?

2 gigs in both setups. Yes it has the same impact. So does pushing the win button. Any time the desktop pops up it means I have to restart the game before playing again.

I would say the problem is your memory. A friend of mine had the same problem. And ultimately decided to downgrade to Windows XP pro.

Get another gig if your vista is 32bit or 4 if its 64.

That might solve the problem.

I had a similar problem with my laptop. I'm running Xp. but once I added more RAM to my computer I was able to tab back and forth with no loss of ftp's.

Sensible advice, as 32bit Vista can only "see" ~3.25 Gig. However, I would go for 4GB anyway, matched pairs of RAM being better than 3 odd sticks. Just swallow the loss of .75GB