My games keep minimizing,what to do?

Hey gamers, I am having a weird problem while running a couple of games on my system. Hope you can help me figure the issue out. The only games that i actually play are World Of Warcraft and call of duty : modern warfare 2. Every time i try to play a game it will minimize to the desktop each hour or so. I have tried many things such as uninstalling and reinstalling the games. I have removed and updated/reinstalled my graphic card drivers a couple of times without any luck as well. I fail to see what is causing the issue at hand,any help is largely appreciated. My system specifications are as follows, Core2 Duo E4600 2.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM. My graphic card is Nvidia 8800GT and have Windows XP service pack 3 running on my system. Thanks in advance.

This sounds weird certainly. I am thinking you have a service like ViewPoint Manager installed on your system or something which is causing this problem. Check to see if the screen saver function in it is set to none and might be causing this. Trying updating your DirectX, check first whether it is up to date or not and update only in the latter case. The Microsoft site will guide you in this case if at all it is an older version. It is possible that some driver is missing or is asking for updates and not getting it hence the issue keeps popping up and minimizing your game.

Check whether your system drivers are in place or not. Update them just in case to see if that changes anything. Your system update or something is running in the background which is most probably causing your game to minimize. Also make sure whether the keys on your keyboard are fine or not, a pressed windows key can also keep minimizing you, i have experienced this first hand so i kid you not when asking you to check it. Also make sure your DirectX is in order and not asking for updates. Some program is surely running in the background and doing this so check the task manager to see what is running in the processes tabs. Disable any automatic updates you might have on while playing the games.

It is possible that your video card can't handle the resolution your playing the games at. Try reducing the resolution and graphic settings you are currently using for the games and see where that takes you. Won't hurt to check whether the video card is properly set in its slot or not as well. Obviously something or some kind of update is running at the scheduled time and doing this. Check the anti virus especially for such cases. The scheduled update option probably has a timing to it and they are triggering the update manager which are minimizing your game. I know this for a fact since i run AVG and it used to do that very regularly.

Try disabling the automatic updates on programs like the anti virus and any firewall you might be running. Also check if there are any scheduled updates being run by windows and other programs. Itunes and adobe programs do this consistently as well so you should check for all the newly installed programs you might have. You must have a time line when you didn't face this issue so think of all the programs you installed before this started happening. Try removing that program and see what happens when you run the game. Make sure you are running the game on visuals which can be supported by your graphic card.

Thanks a lot guys for all your replies and suggestions. It seem my antivirus was causing the problem and nothing else. I had updated all my graphic card drivers. Had also updated my DirectX recently and the Microsoft said it was up to date. I figured it had something to do with my anti virus since that is the only new program i had installed. I was running AVG. It seems it would set off an automatic update every hour. I had disabled the option yet it kept doing that which led to the issue. I uninstalled the anti virus and now i just ran the games for 2 hours or so without any problems at all.