Hello, my old forum friends. I am once again in need of your help as whatever my problem is I have no idea how to stop it from happening. It's so annoying that I'm just about ready to reformat my computer and do I clean install of Windows. I run on a Windows 7 64bit Home Premium computer and to my knowledge everything I have is up to date. This has been going on for months now so I'm fairly certain it's not one of the updates causing the problems. So anyways, onto the problem. I have no idea when this started I just know that I've been dealing with it for awhile now. Okay so, basically, any full screen program I run will lose focus and or minimize. Every 15 minutes or so, (I timed it) my active program will either lose focus. If I'm typing something out (Like what I am doing currently) I will have to click back into the page like something is stealing focus, but nothing takes it's place. Full screen programs (Netflix full screen, movies I have on my computer) will get out of full screen but not minimize which isn't so much of a big deal as it just annoys the **** out of me when this happens every 15 minutes or so. But now here is where the really ****ing annoying thing happens, playing my computer games after about 15 minutes will minimize back to the desktop which if anyone plays online in multiplayer getting forced back into your desktop usually spells death if your in a battle. I can quickly get back to playing but in about another 15 minutes it will happen again. Doing some quick research into the subject yields tons of results of people having the same problem and then possible fixes. So far, all of the possible fixes hasn't helped me at all. Every 15 minutes full screen programs minimizes. - Google Search What I have done so far, Disable screensaver (people have brought this up before so I tried and nothing.) Download various malware scanning software (This didn't do jack **** for me.) Watch processes that run after program loses focus/game minimize. (Besides the fact I have no idea what I am looking for, this didn't do anything for me.) Go into msconfig and disable all non-essential startup program Disabled automatic updates for computer Disable all anti-virus/firewall/everything protection I have on my computer. (I did this just recently and watched some Anime and after about 15 minutes the media player thing lost focus and it wasn't in full screen any longer.) (I've since re-enabled all the programs I disabled once I realized everything I did failed.) I'm very close to the end of my rope here with this. I REALLY DON'T want to reformat my computer and do a clean install but at this rate, I won't be able to play any of my computer games online without being interrupted every 15 minutes or so. But yeah, ANY help you can give me regarding this issue along with possible fixes I would greatly appreciate. <3 Thanks!
Hmmm... that's quite a puzzler. Have you recently installed any new software or games? E.g. Additional AV software, Firewalls, game clients (like Origin (****ing piece of **** software!!)). When reviewing the currently active processes, you should click the button that shows all currently running processes. Write down everything that's running before the return to desktop occurs so you can compare the running processes just after it minimizes to desktop. You can also review what's happening with your system by going to Start > (In the Run box type eventvwr. Expand the viewer and locate the system logs. Look for an approximate timestamp of when the last minimize was and see if there are any associated logs that show an install occurring or hardware error or anything beyond the normal. Have you got high CPU / GPU / Memory usage at the time of a minimize? You can view this by going to the performance tab of the Task manager. Leave it open and check it every few minutes to see where your current idle state is (when doing nothing except viewing TM). Ideally, you should be running at around 40%-60% memory and <5% CPU in idle state. If they are running excessive of that, you may have a performance issue which causes your game or movies to cut out. Has your computer 'blue screened' recently? To review GPU usage, you'll want to open a game in 'windowed' mode so it's open in the background and then open your GPU's driver application that comes with the card. It should show you an accurate reading of temperature and usage. When a game is minimised, a graphics card load significantly decreases (because it no longer needs to provide graphical calculations of the game running and show it on screen) this could be a way of your machine telling you you're overloading the graphics card's processing power. Finally, run some trouble shooting and record exactly what it is you're doing when the issue occurs. Find out what applications are running in the background and try to remember when the issue first popped up and what you did last. A computer wouldn't make an amendment on it's own unless something in the registry has been modified. There may have been a virus installed to your machine that's caused a new key to be inserted that causes a desktop timeout. I'd have to have a look around to find out where the key may be located for you to investigate further... if it is that, a simple deletion of the key and restart would rectify the issue.
It's probably something in the task scheduler that runs at that frequency. You can probably delete that task or if it's important reduce the frequency to something less annoying. Deleting other stuff from that or at least reducing the frequency is a good idea since most of the stuff is unnecessary or only necessary about one of every hundred times it runs.
Could you do me a favour and list the keys and their values in your registry under the path; HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Personalization and HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/Explorer/Desktop To access your registry, type regedit in the start > run dialog. You may need to approve administrator access with UAC.
After several hours of going through process logs I think I finally found the issue. Since I've disabled it, I have yet to have a game minimize or the little test movie I watched on Netflix to see if it would kick me out of full screen. It seemed to have something to do with some auto updater type thing. I'm still not sure cause I kinda just went around msconfig and disabled everything that I didn't need. I'm just glad I think I can finally play a game without worrying I would be kicked to the desktop. Thanks for your help Stevo, and pyro.
I'm having the same issues, and would like to know what process you disabled to make it stop. I know it's been quite some time in between, but if you could help, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Sounds like he doesn't know what process it was, but if you go into msconfig and the startup tab, you can disable your non-essential programs as well. If you're not sure what one does, just google it, as there are websites that describe most of the common applications and whether you need them or not.