Sounds like you aren't handling events. You need to have an event loop, otherwise the OS will mark your window as unresponsive.
EDIT: Found another forum post talking about the formatting, so I adjusted my pseudo code.
Thanks for the tip! I remember coming across something like this at one point, but I wasn't sure how to implement it properly, or if it was what I needed.
Would it be something to the effect of:
// game loop
Event = someEventToPoll;
while (window is open) { // game loop I already have in place
while (poll event => someEventToPoll) { // new loop to poll an event
// check for close fcn
}
// game fcns, etc. (i.e. everything already in my game loop):
// input();
// ...;
// draw();
}
I remember seeing something vaguely resembling that (obviously with proper syntax, but I think you get the idea). If so, is this fixing the problem because it's 'polling' an event (someEventToPoll) every time the game loop runs - thus having Windows view the program as 'running'? Does this explain why it immediately fails on some machines and not others, though? (I'm still learning how a program interacts with the machine and OS -- since I came from web dev and don't know many of the nuances of this kind of programming -- so knowing why helps a bunch!)
I'm going to give this a try and see if it works! Thanks so much!