Games keep minimising in Windows- HELP!

Need help with a strange issue...

When playing ANY game, I regularly get kicked 'temporarily' to desktop. i.e. the game doesn't crash, it just minimises to the taskbar, so I can click on it and it comes back up. Very annoying when about to shoot someone....

This also seems to happen to Mediaplayer when I am running a video full screen- it randomly goes back to window view every now and again. Not sure if linked.

I thought it may be something to do with my virus scanner, Bitdefender, but I have checked it thoroughly and there are no adverse settings selected.

Any constructive ideas (I haven't provided a hardware list but will if someone knows of a link between this problem and specific hardware, this seems like a window XP/ software issue to me)

Thanks guys!

Nice idea, I thought I had disabled it but will double check.... the start menu doesn't come up though which I presume would happen, and I am nowhere near the keyboard when mediaplayer minimises.

Thanks for the input, anyone else?

Yeah I'd personally guess you have something running in the systray that is attempting to pop up a message. Maybe Zonealarm or some anti virus program.

If you are not connected to the internet, disable and switch off everything you can that runs in the systray and see what happens. Also no harm running antivirus to see if you have something nasty or some such shit.

Also keep an eye on the windows key just in case as well as hitting shift rapidly.

In time it took you to type that post that you could have found out!

It activates "Sticky Keys".