Games minimize for a bit during gameplay

[Reidlos65]

I am trying to help my friend figure out why when he plays games (particulary atm Diablo III and Borderlands 2) the screen will go black or minimize his game for less then a second and then come back.

I have gone over 2 major things and I can not confirm they were ALL done correctly but I am pretty sure they were (hes in Texas im in Vermont)

I did the following

tried having the games run in window full screen mode
100% removed all his video card drivers and re installed
did a selective start up in MS config to only have Microsoft services running


I am running out of idea, none of these worked.

He is using a HDMI cable to a TV as a monitor, im not a fan of this setup and it could be the issue but he doesnt have a monitor to swap out.

 

[inzone]

If the game is minimized during gameplay then Windows has interupted it for something to be run. Just yesterday I was playing MW3 and all of a sudden the game minimized and my anti virus poped up with a trojan warning so there are programs that will do that and interrupt the game.
Have you tried going back to a previous driver ? It's not mandatory to have the most current driver if that driver doesn't enhance anything pertaining to your system.
Have you done a bios upgrade ? You can also revert to a previou bios also for the same reason.

 

[PudgyChicken]

Windows update has a nasty habit of interrupting your games, too. If your friend is one of "those people" who always puts off installing updates, make sure he's fully patched and updated.

 

[inzone]

You can set the Windows update to update at a certian time and it can be at an odd time that your not using it for gaming.

 

[Reidlos65]

Thanks for possible solutions guys but I think I may have found the issue. I would like to still hear your opinions.


I had him monitor his Card with GPU - Z, in particular the temps. I had him play the games in question and see if you can find anything when it minimizes, he waited for it to happen then minimized it again and looked in his system tray, he says hes seen it say that the video driver has failed on occasion (this issue was the reason we wiped his drivers and re installed)

I told him check your temps durring all this. Hes saying number from 95c to 105c This is very very hot. I told him to set his fan (hes using a randeon 6800 series I belive) to 90% and try it. his idle temp is 55c but even with his fan on almost max (he said he didnt hear it sound like it was running higher which worried me) he still had 100c temps.

Any card running at over 100c at max fan in 5 mins of game play is having serious heat issues. I think hes fan is not working properly, its spining but it doesnt seem to 1) increase in speed and 2) well work well.

So im going to have him test it a few more times, hes going to keep the fan at max, open up the side, clean out dust etc and see what happens but Im thinking his card is on its last leg. Even if this isnt the issue with the minimizing, this is its own issue.

 

[PudgyChicken]

Woah, temps like that shouldn't happen. Hell, even with my OC'd GTX 480's with stock cooling that doesn't happen.

I would assume that there is some sort of hardware fault here that's causing this issue. Whether that be a faulty fan or a faulty temp sensor or a faulty capacitor, he still should try to send it in for repairs or get it replaced.