http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18387
--- Comment #3 from Ben Anderson roothorick@new.rr.com 2009-05-10 01:42:27 --- I found a workaround, of sorts, but you still risk a hardlock with Catalyst drivers. Run the game in a separate X server (something along the lines of "startx ./wine 'C:\Program Files\Oblivion\Oblivion.exe' -- :1") and when you're done, zap (ctrl-alt-backspace) the X server, bringing you back to your original X server with your regular desktop. You can then also use Ctrl-Alt-Fx to go back to your desktop while the game is running (also risking a hardlock!)
By the same logic you should be able to simply run wine directly from startx with no X server running, possibly avoiding the hardlock risk altogether, but that takes away a significant amount of Wine's convenience (I'm just about logging out completely anyway! Why not just reboot into Windows and enjoy better performance? etc.)