minimising games

[joshd]

i have a problem where games minimise to the taskbar, and i see the desktop.

i first noticed it on CSS. when i joined a server, at the window that first comes up where you click "OK" before you play, it would to minimise. i have to click OK really quickly before it goes minimises again.

i also get it on nfsmw. when i load it, and it shows the videos, you have to click at the right time for it to stay up. i purposely minimised the game, to save a screenshot, and i could not get it to stay up at all. it would let me do say.. 1 second before it minimised, and however many buttons i pressed/clicked with mouse etc, the game would not stay up.

this is a very strange problem, and i have never come accross anything of the sort before.

when it does minimise, there is never any bubbles/messages that could have caused it to minimise or anything.

anyone know what an earth it going on?

i am running cat6.4, driver reinstall did not help.

 

[FlashDude]

This just started for me saturday after the patch, Valve messed something up again. With the other game I don't know.

 

[Trotter]

You may have something running in the background that is messing with it.

Any time I want to game, I have to kill Yahoo Widget Engine, ObjectDock, and Folding@Home, or my games keep minimizing.

 

[joshd]

oh OK, i will have an experiment later. i think i may well have been folding actually.

 

[Trotter]

Folding uses all of the available CPU cycles, which is a good thing. It is supposed to drop to the lowest priority when you need the CPU (which it does), but it is still running. Since it is totally CPU-intensive, it will knock your games in and out.