I run almost all of my games in full screen mode since... well since I've started gaming.

Are there pitfalls to running games windowed? In particular a 20 plus year old game (Gothic)?

Thanks for any info. Below I will just explain further if anyone is interested but that's my question.

I've been having a hard, no more like impossible, time getting Gothic to run. I've followed I don't know how many guides now, verbatim, from all of these "Get Gothic to run and play on modern systems" claims. None of them have worked. And the problem is ALWAYS the same... access violation access violation access violation. (I've tried all recommendations to fix those, having marked all 6 application files in Gothic System as exceptions to DEP. Marked all 6 as "Run as Administrator" and tried 3 different compatibility settings on all 3. Doesn't matter.. access violation.

So I found a 2021 post someplace (not here or Steam I remember that) about the relatively new Gothic 2 add-on (can't remember the name now sorry) but they had constant access violations. One of the recommended fixes was to go into the ini file and set it to run in windowed mode. And trust me, whenever I find ANYTHING anywhere I try it. So, I tried it.

My god. The game came up and ran flawlessly. In DX11 no less! With mods! But it's in windowed mode. (Right now it's a very small window but I assume I'll figure that out at some point. My main concern is, why do all games pretty much run full screen at default? So I posted the question because I wondered if there may be issues later on from running windowed.

People generally prefer to run their games at the highest resolution supported by their monitor; higher resolution means more detail and improved image quality. Windowed mode generally means running at lower than your monitor's resolution. If you are using keyboard and mouse, it also means you might end up clicking or interacting with something outside the game window, especially if the in-game keybindings relate to a Windows shortcut.

Additionally, and this is anecdotal so if someone knows better please chime in, exclusive fullscreen reportedly results in better performance in most games, leading to higher frame rates.

You could possibly use a program like Lossless Scaling to run the game windowed, but upscale to borderless windowed, if you really wanted to. That might reduce the image quality somewhat, not to mention being more complicated, so it will really depend on if played windowed bothers you.

I'm happy to hear you were able to get Gothic running, it's really a fantastic little RPG that I sunk many hours into.

Thank you. I've already switched in game resolution to match my desktop, noticed that the taskbar hid some of the dialogue box, so went in and hid the taskbar. I'm not worried about performance with this game on this system (lol). Definitely will not be a problem. But I did not know that about performance, thank you, that could be a handy thing to remember in the future.

Turning DEP off is a good idea when the error is an access violation but have you also tried to turn ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) off? That should also be worth trying.

No, I didn't try that. Is that something I need to learn how to do or should I be okay just playing it in windowed mode?

Um, the option for turning that off is actually right next to the DEP option. If you have Windows 10 you can find that by clicking on:

Settings -> Update & Security -> Windows Security -> App & browser control -> Exploit protection settings

See screenshot. You can turn DEP and ASLR on or off system wide or make exceptions from the system settings for specific programs.

Wow, mine doesn't look anything like that screenshot at all. I must be doing something wrong.

Ok, yeah, I was doing it wrong. I was going to the DEP settings from a different place. Going through windows security I am now seeing your screen exactly. Sorry about that. My bad.

I'll try it now. Thank you.

The screenshot below shows where I was doing it before.