OT...FSX randomly minimizes (other games too)

[Duckie]

Ran into this today for the first time. Start FSX normally in full screen mode, select aircraft and location, start up is normal. Before I get light on the struts the sim minimizes to the tool bar. This is NOT a crash. The FSX icon is visible and task manager shows it running. Takes forever to get the sim up again using alt tab. Reboot works every but what's the point? Once I get back in sim if I switch to windowed mode it does minimize but instead the game pauses about every 10 to 20 sec. Hit P and back in sim but 10 to 20 sec later blah, blah, blah!

After hours of research it seems this happens to a lot of folks. Tried a dozen or so fixes but none have worked.

Malware and Bit Defender say I have no viruses or malware and I've killed all running presses before going into the sim. This happens with the other 2 FPS games I play also.

Any silver bullets out there. As always, any help is appreciated. My PC specs are in my sig.

[WarHorse47]

I've encountered this recently as well. Just started happening after I updated to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8.0.

Duckie, what's your OS?

[Duckie]

Win 7 Home Prem.

[gradyhappyg]

Looks like he is running W7. I had that a while back but only with FSX not other games. Fixed mine by deleting the FSX CFG. file in C:\Users\your name here\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX and letting it rebuild. If it's happening with other games sounds more like a hardware issue/setting of some kind. You can also right click on the games icons on your desktop and make sure they are set to run in a normal window and not minimized.

[racartron]

I just encountered a similar problem with SIMLauncherX. FSX launches normally but when done it immediately minimizes to the icon on the toolbar. I resolve the problem by hitting the shift key while right clicking on the tool bar icon, selecting maximize and every thing is fine after that. I use Windows 7 Ultimate and it is claimed to be an issue with this OS.

It doesn't answer the why question but it is a very easy fix.

[FlameOut]

I too have experienced this!

My situation kept degrading... FSX just stopped booting up, then I began to loose the ability to browse the internet : all of my passwords used to look at various Forums for help were no longer "saved". Then my passwords that I use for work were also gone.

I got a warning that my "Overclock" had failed !

After about 2-3 days of this I started getting BSOD's.

I pulled the HDD and replaced it with an SDD. MoBo, power supply, I-7 3960X Chipset, Video card, Memory and the other stuff all seem to be O.K. for now.

I just reinstalled FSX Gold 2 days ago and will use this weekend to start all over.

[WarHorse47]

The minimizing of FSX for me is fairly random.

Typically I'm in and out of FSX throughout the day. When it does minimize, it takes me awhile to get it to maximize. When it does come back, the screen in black so I have to switch from full screen to windowed screen to get the view back.

When it first happened I had thought that maybe some other program like an update or something was trying to run in the background. Then I wondered if there was a gauge or module at play, but since it was happening to different aircraft I really wasn't sure. Since it started after migrating to Windows 8.1 I thought the update might be the cause, but I see that others are experiencing the same thing with different OS.

I haven't had the experiences as FlameOut and hope not as I had to replace my hard drive a few months back. Still, I wonder what's going on. Weird, just weird.

[Duckie]

Yeah, doesn't seem to be an one solution. But So far nothing has worked for me. I have none of the suspect files or exe's as mentioned in other threads on line and since my situation occurs with FSX and the 2 other games I play it is not an FSX problem. I've checked for software update schedulers and the one' I have found I have shut down. Did another complete system virus scan over night and again zip, zero, nada.

All my hardware seems to be functioning normally. HDDs - no bad sectors (my 2 First person shooters are on a separate drive from FSX), PS voltages are steady, memory checks OK.

All I know right now is that neither FSX nor the other 2 games are playable with this situation. And since it doesn't appear to be FSX related so reinstalling X won't fix the problem.

Very frustrating.

[Terry]

Has anyone tried locking down the firewall so that no program can go out to the net on its own? Seems like it must be something taking priority which will minimize whats running.

[Duckie]

Has anyone tried locking down the firewall so that no program can go out to the net on its own? Seems like it must be something taking priority which will minimize whats running.

At this point I'm willing to try just about anything. How does one go about locking down the firewall?

[Duckie]

Well...it's fixed (for now?)! Don't have a clue what it was but thanks to WH I remembered to clean my registry. Using CCleaner I got 3 1/2 pages of suspect registry entries. Deleted them (after creating a new restore point) and that did the trick.

Whew! Thanks to all who replied and for your suggestions. This forum (and its folks) is one of the most helpful places on the planet. Salute!

[Butcherbird17]

Hey Duckie, have you recently updated your vid card drivers? If so try reverting back to your previous driver and see if the problem persists.
Another thing I would try is setting your overclock back to stock and try your games again. If it persists at least you'll know its not the overclock. If none of these work maybe try a restore to just before the last winders update.

Joe

Edit, I was posting at the same time and see you got it fixed.

[glennc]

I've been getting the same thing for a while. If I fly windowed, I can see the pop up come up and go away very quickly. The force feed back on the G940 locks up and FSX CTDs a few seconds later. It took a while to figure it out. It was one of two things: Flash or the update stuff Asus installs. If you check scheduled tasks, you find they run at startup and every hour after that. Uninstall them, no more pop-ups. So far, the absence of Flash has caused no problems and flying is fun again.

Glenn

[ejoiner]

Ran into this today for the first time. Start FSX normally in full screen mode, select aircraft and location, start up is normal. Before I get light on the struts the sim minimizes to the tool bar. This is NOT a crash. The FSX icon is visible and task manager shows it running. Takes forever to get the sim up again using alt tab. Reboot works every but what's the point? Once I get back in sim if I switch to windowed mode it does minimize but instead the game pauses about every 10 to 20 sec. Hit P and back in sim but 10 to 20 sec later blah, blah, blah!

After hours of research it seems this happens to a lot of folks. Tried a dozen or so fixes but none have worked.

Malware and Bit Defender say I have no viruses or malware and I've killed all running presses before going into the sim. This happens with the other 2 FPS games I play also.

Any silver bullets out there. As always, any help is appreciated. My PC specs are in my sig.

This could be an issue with a couple of things.

1. A plane like the Virtavia A-4, which if you switch to it in flight, will pause the sim with an error message around licensing violation. Win8 may minimize the sim when that happens.

2. OS losing focus of FSX as priority application. Do you use FSX Accelerator? If you switch back and forth to that application, sometimes you will get this error.

[Duckie]

Hey Joe---thanks for the tip re vid drivers. I'm one of those folks who if it's not broke I don't try to fix it! Loaded latest vid drivers upon initial install of the card and it's worked fine ever since. So, it ain't broke! Re the OC, that was on the list of things to try but way down.

Eric---interesting you should mention the Virtavia Skyhawk because a full 3 pages out of the total 3 1/2 were all from the A-4. I'm aware of the license error problem but for every license error, every weapons jettison, every weapons change a registry entry was made that CCleaner said was either partial, not used, or corrupt! Now that concerns me that the A-4 is hitting the registry with that stuff!

I don't have/use accelerator.

Thanks again for all your responses and suggestions.

[dvj]

I began encountering this problem Thursday. FSX jumps into windowed mode. My PC underwent some kind of virus scan update from Norton Wednesday night, which is now continually catching Trojan attacks on the PC. I also had recently updated to the latest Nvidia driver which killed several game programs. Going to look at going back 1 driver version as a potential fix.

[Duckie]

Well, hate to say, but like poltergeist, IT'S BACK!

This is really starting to get to me. Task Manager Performance History graphs show all 4 CPUs spiking every 8 to 12 seconds with no programs running on a fresh boot. With mouse curser idle in center screen, when the spikes occur the little hourglass icon flickers a few times during the spike and then goes away.

Flying FSX in windowed mode with TaskMan running CPU 0 is at 100% with CPUs 1-3 varying from 0% to about 25%, like "grass" on an oscilloscope. When the spike comes that cause the game to minimize (full screen mode) or pause (Windowed mode) all 4 processors go to 100% until I un-pause the game. The CPUs 1-3 go back to growing grass and CPU 0 remains at 100%. This cycle endlessly repeats itself as long as the game is running.

Again, this also goes on with the FPS games I play (COD MW3 mainly). They do not have windowed modes so they do minimize to the icon on the tool bar but return immediately upon clicking on the icon.

Checked temps max is 54 degrees C during the games.

Man, if I cant figure this out pretty soon I looking for another hobby! Hello Mustang project car, here I come!

[WarHorse47]

Microsoft has a neat little app called Process Explorer which lets you see what's running at any time. Specifically, it should point to what is causing those spikes.

I used it when trying to work out some OOM issues with the Milviz 407. I ran it in tandem with FSX and could see when FSX started to run out of memory.

[Jafo]

Modern MS OSs [post XP] have been known to interrupt full-screen games on occasion. There's nothing actually WRONG with your system....other than telling [many] processes to simply butt-out while you are gaming.
One famous one is your AV [though some actually have a gaming-state/mode]... but just about anything can trip out FSX ... Skype's another 'good' one.....some settings/options in Windows Update....and just about any Proggy updating service....
Don't panic [famous subtitle to HHGTTG] .... if your system is actually going to self-destruct you'll smell it soon enough...

[dvj]

It might be prudent to run a full anti-virus system scan. Because Norton recently ran a software update, after the scan I'm going to uninstall and re-install the this latest version because it too has come up with an error.

d

[WarHorse47]

Dang. Happened to me twice this morning.... again.

[Terry]

I wonder if this would do any good? Found it at Flightsim under must have files.

• uiautomationcore.dll: Prevent random crashes on 64 bit operating systems later than Vista

[Jafo]

I don't believe the Op is experiencing an actual 'crash' but in fact a loss of focus that causes FSX to minimize from Full Screen.
That's not a crash but simply a RUDE interuption by another process.

To get back into the game full screen you can alt-tab to hilight FSX and then hit 'enter' ...it'll be back to normal.

Unfortunately too many program makers think THEIR program is more important than anything you might be doing and they WILL steal focus from you and minimize whatever you only 'thought' was more important - in our case ....that's FSX.

If it all becomes too much to bear the solution is to hunt down EVERY program/process that thinks it's superior/important and shut it down...disable it....uninstall it....or at the very least tell it NOT to be always checking for updates, etc [goes for Windows Update too] ...

[Duckie]

...

If it all becomes too much to bear the solution is to hunt down EVERY program/process that thinks it's superior/important and shut it down...disable it....uninstall it....or at the very least tell it NOT to be always checking for updates, etc [goes for Windows Update too] ...

This is where I am. I have narrowed it down to windows system 32 file "rundll32.exe" which opens a sub app by the same name. That file then calls an executable called " suragateCom.exe". I have scanned these file for malware and virus and found none. I have one more thing to try when I return home. If that doesn't work I will uninstall 7, format the disk and reinstall. As it is, FSX is unflyable with this happinging.

When this file runs, it hits the CPU for up to 53% which causes any, that's ANY, currently running app to pause. If you're typing when this occurs the curser will pause and you skip letters until the event is over and if you are not paying attention you can end up with jibberish laced throughout your doc! If you are in a game in full screen mode it will minimize the game to the task bar and for some games the only way to get them back is the old 3 finger salute.

[WarHorse47]

Duckie, did you do a search for " suragateCom.exe"? Might help to identify what program installed it or its origin.

If its part of your OS and created by MS, you can research its purpose on their tech site. If it was installed by another program, sometimes there are options to prevent it from running.

I did a search for it on my machine (Win8.1) and found nothing.

BTW - do you use CCCleaner? It has a tab that identifies all the programs that run on startup. In doing some research on this subject, I came across some threads that pointed to programs that update HP Printer software. Anyways, I'm looking at these as possible culprits for my experience since some programs tend to run at random and can minimize FSX if they are runningat the same time.