Games Randomly Minimizing

[George]

This is a rather strange issue, as it has no obvious traits. Every once and a while, a game will simply minimize. I don't spend enough time on other full-screen applications to know if it affects them. It's a huge pain in things like Skyrim where you can't minimize without game-breaking issues. I've Googled all 'round and quite a few people have had this problem, but there isn't a solution that's been confirmed. Before you go asking the obvious questions, no, it is not malware, there are no other programs that come up, and I am not accidentally hitting keys. (It's done it while I wasn't even touching the keyboard/mouse.) The strangest part is that nothing happens when it minimizes; no update requests, no notifications, etc.. It just minimizes.

[White Wolf Guardian]

Is this Windows 7 or Windows 8? Most of the game issues seem to be happening with Windows 7 these days.


Also I found this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/115032-13-random-game-minimize

[George]

Windows 7, sorry I forgot to specify.

Also yes, I have seen that article. Seen pretty much anything relevant from Googling.

[White Wolf Guardian]

Well, I would try it or just reformat. I reformat when I've had enough of messing around with a single problem.

[George]

I think that's a little drastic for such a minor problem.

[saph the sergal]

ive had the same issue more annoying wher you run 3 or 4 screens because it all blacks out steam its alt enter to make it windowed mode just try that

[anoni]

So the window just minimizes? Does any other program run or do anything while that happens?

My thought would be that some external programming is forcing any other program to halt in order for it to do some thing, like a virus for example that might want to do something and not want to share CPU with a game.

[George]

So the window just minimizes? Does any other program run or do anything while that happens?

My thought would be that some external programming is forcing any other program to halt in order for it to do some thing, like a virus for example that might want to do something and not want to share CPU with a game.

See this is what I have been trying to find. When it minimizes, nothing suspicious happens. That means I don't even know what to Google. I've checked Processes, Services, etc., it all checks out as normal.  The only thing that seemed weird was this Autodesk Application Manager something-or-other and I got rid of it. Didn't make a difference.

[anoni]

An unwanted program could be starting up when you boot your computer and be running in the background hidden by task manager. To check for this go to the start menu, then search for msconfig and click the file that comes up, go to the startup tab and uncheck any boxes of program names you're not aware of. Restart your computer and see if the problem persists.

[George]

Yeah, I kinda already did that.

[anoni]

Well then I'm out of ideas xD Not really much you can do except format windows I suppose

[George]

I don't really wanna go that far. It's a somewhat minor issue, just kind of annoying.

[anoni]

There might be a better way to do it but I don't really know any other way.

[George]

We'll see if anyone else posts something useful here. The fact that Google got me nothing tells me there probably won't be, but we'll see.

[White Wolf Guardian]

If you have an SSD and a Windows USB 3.0 stick, reformatting windows takes like 5 minutes (Windows 8+ only).