I play Civ 5 on my primary monitor full-screened. However, when I do this, my second monitor is always simply black. I can't use it for anything. Typically, I keep some things on my second monitor – chat/IM windows, a browser with my email and various social networks open, and similar things. However, with the monitor being black, I can't actually use anything there.
I tried playing windowed mode in Civ 5, but there was another problem there. When I left Civ 5 by clicking on another window, part of the game window goes behind Windows 7's start menu/task bar. In some dialog windows, some options are hidden behind the task bar. Clicking on the game doesn't bring it forward for some reason (most applications will move back in front of the start bar).
If there's any confusion about what I'm looking for, I'm looking for something similar to how games like Guild Wars 2 and Star Trek Online work. They are full-screen on one monitor, but my second monitor is visible and I can move my mouse outside of the game to give another window focus, and then back into the game to interact with that window.
Is there some kind of way for me to full screen Civ 5 on one monitor and have my second monitor usable? Some combination of settings that I haven't seen or tried? Are there any bugs in the Civ 5 support forums with workarounds that I may have missed?
Best Answer
From searching Google it seems to be a problem for a number of people, and no one has any real fixes.
A few options you have: (while running in windowed mode)
I just do the Bring to Front option as it puts it all back and seems to only have to be done once per game run.