Full screen games/films randomly minimise.

Sloch

Sloch

Sloch

Associate
Joined
11 Sep 2010
Posts
12
Hi,

Had to make this thread as I'm at a bit of a loss here.

Whenever I watch a film or play a game in full screen, the program will randomly (anywhere between 2 minutes to 1 hour) minimise to the desktop, leaving the program running in the background.

If it helps, full screen games completely minimise, whereas films in full screen will switch to windowed mode.

I've tried anti virus scans, malware scans, uninstalling all my anti virus programs, Game Booster and have tried disabling every program in msconfig (except the OS), all to no avail.

The rig is a year old and has only started doing this within the last month or two.

PC Spec -
Windows 7 64 bit Home
GeForce GTX680
i5 3570k @ 3.40
8GB RAM
1920x1080, 144Hz

Any help is MUCH appreciated.
 
I had similar symptoms a few years back. It was some sort of virus in my case, a rootkit iirc. None of the standard anti virus/malware programs managed to remove it. Might be something completely different in your case, I just remember it being odd because it is unlikely I would have noticed I had picked up the virus if I didn't use full screen programs.

Have you tried opening the task manager as soon as this occurs to see if anything unexpected is running?
 
coolnoj said:
I had similar symptoms a few years back. It was some sort of virus in my case, a rootkit iirc. None of the standard anti virus/malware programs managed to remove it. Might be something completely different in your case, I just remember it being odd because it is unlikely I would have noticed I had picked up the virus if I didn't use full screen programs.

Have you tried opening the task manager as soon as this occurs to see if anything unexpected is running?
Click to expand...

I tried using Process Explorer to try and track down the program. I did notice one thing pop up which I'm sure was conhost.exe which looked like it was stopped by avg iirc.

The only problem was they both disappeared before I had the chance to mash the print screen button! No idea if that was anything though.
 
Last edited:
I had something like this before. If you have dual monitors, have explorer running on the second screen and wait for it to show itself while you run a fullscreen app. Then when it appears you'll spot it. I can't remember what mine was, but I dug it out and killed it.
 
I'm noticing 'dllhost.exe' pops up for around 3 seconds when the minimise happens and then disappears, followed by an avg process that appears and then disappears in around the same time. Could this be something?
 
Sloch said:
I'm noticing 'dllhost.exe' pops up for around 3 seconds when the minimise happens and then disappears, followed by an avg process that appears and then disappears in around the same time. Could this be something?
Click to expand...

Yes, if it's stealing focus it can definitely cause it. Try disabling AVG temporarily and seeing if it still happens.
 
I had this once years ago with Battlefield Bad Company 2. I never did find out what was causing it but I sorted it by doing a complete reformat and fresh windows install. I looked for ages to find a cure so I know your pain. It was really annoying to do a reinstall but afterwards it felt so good as it stopped happening.

One of the first things I did after reinstalling windows on a reformated drive was Battlefield. Then installed other apps slowly after, each time playing some BF to check it wasnt minimising still. After a week or so I was back to normal with all my apps installed and the minimising wasnt happening so I never did find out the reason.

EDIT: Have you tried disabling everything at Windows Startup in msconfig? This may stop the offending program, then just a process of elimination to find which one.
 
Last edited:
neoglow said:
I had this once years ago with Battlefield Bad Company 2. I never did find out what was causing it but I sorted it by doing a complete reformat and fresh windows install. I looked for ages to find a cure so I know your pain. It was really annoying to do a reinstall but afterwards it felt so good as it stopped happening.

One of the first things I did after reinstalling windows on a reformated drive was Battlefield. Then installed other apps slowly after, each time playing some BF to check it wasnt minimising still. After a week or so I was back to normal with all my apps installed and the minimising wasnt happening so I never did find out the reason.

EDIT: Have you tried disabling everything at Windows Startup in msconfig? This may stop the offending program, then just a process of elimination to find which one.
Click to expand...

It's a nightmare. Will leave the reformatting as an absolute last resort!

Have completely disabled everything in msconfig, but there was no difference.

dllhost.exe is definitely there every time the program I'm running loses focus.
 
Did you do a google search before posting on here?

Because if you did you would find a whole host of people from different forums with this same problem; maybe one of them has a solution.
 
Dave**** said:
Did you do a google search before posting on here?

Because if you did you would find a whole host of people from different forums with this same problem; maybe one of them has a solution.
Click to expand...

I have done a good few searches. Most of them cater to something slightly different, or were resolved in a way that didn't work for me.
 
A few websites have done this to me in the past, as in I generally always leave all the other crap running when I play a game, forget precisely which websites as it's been ages now but if I ever left it open in a tab it would ALWAYS do something to send out a "look at me" message to the OS and games would minimise, so trivial and stupid and took ages to realise that is what was doing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom