Note: this post was published 10 years ago. Hopefully these issues have been resolved by DICE since then!
Battflefield 4 is a buggy, but glorious, game.
It’s a total blast and a damn shame the thing doesn’t work most of the time.
The first month out of the box, I was getting a blue screen of death every couple of minutes (fortunately, the guys at DICE finally patched that problem and my video card no longer self-destructs on entry).
However, the other problem that started plaguing me as soon as that one was fixed:
Battlefield 4 doesn’t recognize my mouse or keyboard inputs.
As soon as a join a server and the tactical map comes up – BAM I’m locked out of all my controls.
The weird thing is, I know my mouse and keyboard are working because I can see my cursor move on the other monitor and they are fine when I ALT+Tab back to windows.
So what’s up?
The Problem:
After some head scratching, I figured out what was causing the game to ignore my mouse and keyboard!
The problem is rooted in some older versions of Google Chrome and the fact that Battlefield 4 has to launch through a browser.
Whenever you have Chrome running in the background, the game will still think you are using the other browser and not register any of your inputs.
The Solution:
Like they say: “60% of the time, it works every time”
- As soon as you load to the deploy screen, ALT+TAB your way back to windows.
2. Close every instance of Google Chrome you have running (including the one that the game launched through), and then ALT+TAB your way back into the game.
3. Money.
I mean it: with Chrome out of the way, Battlefield should now recognize that you have a working mouse and keyboard!
I’ve talked to some other people who were experiencing the same thing and this solution worked for them as well, so I’m not crazy. (I swear)
Curiously, other web browsers seem to have no problem running the game – such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. (Edge wasn’t tested, neither was brave).
Sadly, Chrome is my default browser but I have no intention of playing around so that the game opens up in IE every time I want to play.
So the best we can hope for is that they fix this little glitch in another patch down the road.