I tried to play through the MXL Launcher (with d2dx wrapper). Works 1000 times better! I convinced of this.
1) When I was start the game through game.exe with the -w
option (to run in windowed mode without having to press Alt+Enter each time), the game started in a very small window. I think the game ignored the d2dx config, I don't know how else to explain it. So I always started game in full screen and press Alt+Enter each time. Only in this way d2dx worked as it should.
2) When playing in windowed mode, after Alt+Tab the game was minimized every time. It was very annoying.
Now I tried running d2dx through the MXL Launcher.
1) If the checkbox "Run the game in windowed mode" is checked in the launcher, then the game always starts automatically in windowed mode with the settings from d2dx. This is great!
2) And after alt+tab - game is no longer minimized !! Although if i start the game through the default fullscreen, and then press Alt+Enter to switch to windowed mode, then the game will still be minimized after Alt+Tab. but that doesn't matter anymore, since I am now playing in windowed mode by default.
And there are no errors after exiting the game, since on the shortcut game.exe there is a compatibility mode with Windows XP (SP3) and in the d2dx config nocompatmodefix=true