That pretty much svcks.

Yeah, kills it immediately for me.

Had this same issue

Works normally for me. Be it is fullscreen or windowed. A bit clunky but works in the end.

To be honest given how often alt+tab crashes every other Bethesda game released in the last ten years it's probably a good idea.

was able to get back into the game after alt tabbing by pressing the windows key, clicking skyrim on the task bar, then alt tabbing to something else, then back to skyrim, then clicking somewhere even though I couldn't see the mouse. Sounds like voodoo, but it's been reliable.

I mentioned it in a post further down, but I've got the same problem. I run a 2nd monitor to watch SC2 streams and its going to be a total pain to have to restart the game everytime I need to check something or change the stream.. ugh.

Use the http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4 and alt-tab will work (and from my experience with previous games the game might be more stable overall)

Its pretty fustrating, and not only that, any inturruption from programs like xfire or msn seem to force minimize the game making it a pain to get back in.

I'll have to try this tomorrow. I usually get much lower framerates running in windowed mode, but its worth a shot if it lets me work on other things. There's a reason why PCs can multitask.

Maxed settings @ 1080p on a GTX480 has my card running at 90-95% gpu usage.. its definately stressing the GPU... CPU, not so much.

Alt-Tab works on me :S

Works great! Thank you anandus!

The first game after Morrowind and Oblivion where alt-tabbing actually works for me.

One simple thing I have to do when tabbing back into the game is doing it twice, i.e. alt+tabtabtab until Skyrim is selected, then do a 'full round' of alt+tabtabtab to select it again.

I found a way to resolve this issue every time.

I have 2 monitors, which makes this a bit easier. But, after Alt+Tabing out, i Alt+Tab back in, then drag my cursor to my other monitor and click anything. at this point i have another window active (after clicking it) but the black Skyrim window is still full screen on my other monitor. Now I click anywhere in the black Skyrim window and it comes up immediately, back in full screen.

Works perfectly fine for me.

Turning on the steam overlay and then alt-tabbing helps, I think.

Alt-tabbing works fine for me, I just have to do it twice on the way back in. Tabbing out is fine, first tab back makes the screen black then I have to tab onto Skyrim again and it works.

It works for me, but to switch back to Skyrim, I have to alt-tab to it twice in a row. Otherwise it'll just show a window border with black content. If I alt-tab to it again when that happens, it works.

Edit: Ninja'd...

Aha, thanks guys, I'll try this. The borderless window works well, but I miss Steam screenshot capability.

If I am playing in full screen mode (which I always do), if I ALT TAB out, I can't get the game to come back up the normal way, i.e., just by clicking on the window. All that gives me a window that's jet black and you can't do anything. The solution for this particular problem is to ALT TAB twice (which touching anything else in between), the second time picking Skyrim from the window that pops up. This always restores the game back to full screen mode and becomes responsive once again.

EDIT: Blah. What Durzo and dannythefool said.

EDIT 2: Although this shouldn't be an issue in the first place. It needs to be fixed and not require us to come up with these silly workarounds.

Alt Tab out of the game.
Alt Tab back into the game.
Alt Tab to another window.
Then Alt Tab back.

It works

Alt tabbing out works, but clicking on the minimized skyrim on the windows bar to reactivate does not.

Alt tabbing back in does work. so far