Game's minimising every 15-30 mins!

[Capsinurass]

Ok, so I consider myself pretty pro when it comes to fixing computer problems and such. But this new error has really got me pissed off.

So what happens is, that every 15 to 30 mins my game will just minimize to desktop. This isn’t the program crashing it just looses focus and then minimizes. This is really random, so what I have don’t is end any programs that might be doing this. (Like Skype, daemon tools and stopping windows side bar.) I have been working on this for all of today and it’s a bit as I have to wait at least 30 mins to see if I have fixed it.

Every time I think I have fixed it, I haven’t sooo after hours of trying to fix this I have a few options left... And if all fails ill have to reinstall Vista. This is here more so for people that might have the same problem or if any of you have any ideas on how to help.

Now i have think i have narrowed it down to Desktop Window Manager as the source of the problem. After TF2 minimizes I look in the Event Viewer and find that "The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because composition was disabled by a running application" and "A request to disable the Desktop Window Manager was made by process (hl2.exe)". Soo as of now I'm thinking about disabling Windows Aero theme to see if this might fix it. But as i have always use this theme I'm a bit confused. I like the look of the theme and hate the basic one.. Any ideas anyone??

[[DRuG]NikT]

If you right click the launcher and go into properties, you will see there are options you can set to disable aero effects etc on a per application basis.. not sure how well it works coz my main gaming rig is XP x64, but I'd suggest there's a few options in there that should do the trick without needing to disable it system wide.

I just want to say good luck, we're all counting on you.

[[DRuG]NikT]

[DRuG]NikT steps back in for a second..

I just want to tell you all 'good luck' we're all counting on you

(xtra pts for spotting the movie reference)

[[DRuG]Shane0]

A few tips.

-Make sure you don't have the game as windowed.
-Download the latest drivers for your video card.
-Disable any power saving options.
-I know this may sound silly but try running in windows xp compatibility mode.

Anyways good luck man.

[Capsinurass]

Thanks for the suggestions but I have tried all of them, disabling the areo them didn’t do anything. I did some more googleing and found that if you create a new profile it can fix it. And it seems it has. Now I have to get all my docs and music on this profile... I would still like to find out what the cause of it was.
Thanks guys!

[[SiK]Grim_Reeper]

Oh my I used to have this.

I did exactly that, it fixed it for about 3 months then did it again then got worse with applications closing every 15 mins (mta race :[) I googled round for a very long time and if I remember correctly it was DirectDraw problems with my vid card, a x1300 series ati radeon card.

I'm not sure if formatting fixes it, I basically got told to buy a new vid card.

Be careful, you might not have this same problem.

[Capsinurass]

Yeah its alreaddy doing it again idk what to do. I'm going to try to reinstall vista on a different hd then if that dont work. It has to be my card.

[Capsinurass]

After even more time googleing i found out that if you upgrade from avg 8.5 to avg 9 it can cause this bug to happen. No idea why but uninstalling then reinstalling seems to have fixed the problem.

[[DRuG]NikT]

Nice work

[[DRuG]Shane0]

After even more time googleing i found out that if you upgrade from avg 8.5 to avg 9 it can cause this bug to happen. No idea why but uninstalling then reinstalling seems to have fixed the problem.

AVG over the past year has become shit, I wouldn't use it anymore.