[CLIENT] Doesn't start games, goes back to home screen

Yeah so basically whenever I join a game, be it team builder, ranked three vs. three, or aram, when the client is supposed to take it into loading screen, the window disappears entirely although I still have the Riot Games logo in my notification/background app section of my taskbar. When I click on the logo, it either goes to the normal "Game is still in progress" screen, like it does when you click on it when the actual game is open or it just takes me back to the home page where I see the news articles, youtube videos, option to shop, or view profiles. I'm not exactly sure what's causing this or even if anyone else is affected, but the steps to reproduce for me are as simple as join a match, try to go into loading screen, hope it works right, then get sad when it doesn't. It does not happen every time although I do not change my routine or do anything differently attempting to start the loading screen or joining the group. After this, I have to close league entirely, often through task manager because it wont open unless I get rid of everything league related, and restart. After the restart and I log in again, the reconnect button appears which has worked fine up through now. All in all, I haven't missed a game yet, but the whole thing is time consuming and annoying and I often get in to game a little late and miss some farm.

Further details - Figured I should include this because it's probably relevant. I'm not gonna tell you all my computer specifications because that's lengthy and boring and I highly doubt that much is relevant, but I will say that it's a custom PC, fairly beefy, running on Windows 8.1. I have tried the repair feature in the patcher, but that hasn't worked. Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I believe loading screen does not launch only when the league client is not in the foreground and the active app. Basically, if I'm doing anything else (Chrome, Steam, etc.), loading screen will not launch.