Gaming with two monitors

[General Mortars]

Hi, guys,

long time no see.
I wonder if you could help me, I've hade a two monitor setup for almost two decades now.
Never had any problem with it til last week when I had to reinstall Windows 7 (it had bloated to a whopping 190 gb).
Ever since, I have serious problems playing.
At random moments throughout a gaming session (usually in stressful moments of frantic firing and dodging), the game suddenly minimises and I find the mouse cursor roaming around the 2nd monitor.
I've lost track of how many times I find miself rushing to the 1st monitor screen to maximise the game, only to find out that I died or were incapped in the 2-5 seconds my mouse decided to take a stroll around the 2nd monitor screen.
Only solution I've found so far is to disconnect the 2nd monitor while playing (turning it off doesn't change anything), which is an operation I avoid doing too often for fear I may accidentaly bend a pin over time.

Please help.

[Gravitator]

Hi!
A similar sacrifice performance drop in games after reinstalling Windows > https://forum.videohelp.com/showthread.php?t=365618
Hard disk drive divided into partitions HDD/SSD ?

[General Mortars]

Hi, Gravitator,

nothing of the kind, computer is running as smoothly as ever.

[Nelson37]

Completely uninstall video card drivers including physical removal of the card if feasible. Reboot then clean temp files and registry. Physically replace card after reboot and clean. Recommend CCleaner.

Re-install either latest or known good drivers from card maker.

[Cauptain]

Whats videocard?

To uninstall any videocard use DDU

Go to safe mode (F8), run it, option 1.

After this install the newest driver from your card. update DirectX 9 too.

[Bjs]

Gaming ?

Need to know what titles are affected.

Most reporting similar issue have found installing directx 9 to solve the problem.

Also a fresh install means nothing if the hard drives health is fading ... this can cause issues unknown to end users to appear random with unknown cause. Gaming and video editing place greater loads or stress on system hardware.

[hello_hello]

I'd suggesting maybe trying different (older) driver versions. At least if no other solution presents itself. Although the latest DirectX 9 probably wouldn't hurt.

Drivers aren't always perfect. I'm not a gamer but the most recent XP Geforce drivers I tried were terrible (the luminance levels seem wrong) and while it's completely unrelated, I'm yet to install video drivers for my card that remember the "levels" setting for both monitors after a reboot. The old drivers I use remember it for all monitors as long as it's not VGA on the primary output. At least that's consistent so I know one monitor needs to be reset after a reboot. Sorry.... I guess I needed to vent a little.... I'm ranting about Nvidia drivers. I don't know about other flavours.