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43973
Alienware Alpha: All Games Randomly Minimize
As the title says, anytime I play any game it will randomly minimize about every 20 mins. The game doesn't crash and I just have to maximize it again, but it is very annoying. I've looked in event viewer and I cannot find anything coinciding with it. I've also gone through task manager and cannot find anything taking up resources. It may be completely irrelevant, but here recently my Nvidia Control Panel will become unresponsive and crash every time it's opened. However, I've clean installed twice and also used Driver Sweep for a fresh install and it still crashes. Any response would be much appreciated as I'm getting closer to a factory reset.
I have a Core i5 4690 and 16gb ram installed. Everything else is stock.
Globbits3
5 Posts
0
April 20th, 2015 07:00
Yes, I get this too about 20 minutes after booting up. There is some background task that is activating after this time. I suspect that it may be the Dell applications although I'm not sure. I have uninstalled all of the Dell ones for now (kept the Alienware ones) and it seems ok so far, although it didn't happen every day so I can't be sure.
Alienware-Joe
671 Posts
0
April 20th, 2015 10:00
Just out of random curiosity, is this happening within Desktop or Console mode?
Globbits3
5 Posts
0
April 22nd, 2015 09:00
Desktop mode for me. I don't use the console mode at all, so don't know if it happens there too.
Alienware-Joe
671 Posts
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April 22nd, 2015 16:00
I'd try and see if a clean boot would solve it, basically to check if there's any background process that's causing it to minimize.
Globbits3
5 Posts
1
April 27th, 2015 02:00
I've tried clean booting several times - it makes no difference.
However, I think I've found the application doing this. It's Alien Respawn. I uninstalled this about a week ago and since then no problems whatsoever. I think the Alien Respawn notifications are what is causing this. It must be setting the focus away from the game when the notifications appear, causing any game currently being played to minimize, or at the very least to lose focus.
Alienware-Joe
671 Posts
0
April 27th, 2015 07:00
Personally, I would not have uninstalled the Alienrespawn.
Just please make sure to have a way to re-install windows onto your Alpha should anything happen with the Operating System.
Vedeyn
29 Posts
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April 27th, 2015 14:00
I have noticed this as well, there is a CMD prompt that flashes very quickly causing the current program to lose focus. It does this on my Dell Venue 8 Pro as well, so most certainly a Dell program that is doing it.
tsallen46
2 Posts
1
May 8th, 2015 04:00
Ultimately what I had to do was reset the Alpha to factory default and wipe out everything. While this sucked and took some time it did solve the problem. So, I'm not entirely sure what program was causing it but it must not have been anything preinstalled. The only other work around I found to work was playing in windowed full screen. However, a lot of games don't give you that option. It sucked having to erase everything and start fresh, but everything else just ended In frustration. Hopefully you find another solution and if not just bite the bullet and start clean.
SalvadoreRoss
1 Message
0
June 24th, 2015 23:00
I tried resetting the Alpha to factory default and it worked...for a time, however, the problem came back after windows installed a lot of updates when I went into desktop mode and rebooted.