Stop desktop showing at midnight

unplanned bacon · Jul 7, 2015

When my PC clock reaches midnight, the explorer taskbar shows up at the bottom of the screen. If I'm playing a game or something it ALT+Tabs out to show the desktop

USAFRet · Jul 7, 2015

Why is it doing this? Some timer job, your AV kicking in, Windows checking for updates?

Jonas Magnusson · Jul 7, 2015

sounds like an weird bug or virus, i don't think it could or should do that under normal conditions.

nukemaster · Jul 7, 2015

It may not hurt to check your Task Scheduler under Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Maintenance and see if WinSAT is enabled.

I am almost sure this was running Windows Experience tests on my system at that time before I turned it off.

unplanned bacon · Jul 7, 2015

USAFRet :

I'm not sure, nothing appears active and computer AFAIK is free of viruses. The only thing in task scheduler which occurs near that time is Dropbox

Dropbox is set to do something every day at 23:57

Also just seen the last time Windows updated was 2 months ago (between then and now I reserved Windows 10 which shows up in Windows Updater (it shows I reserved it). All the updates (and there's a lot of them are optional). I rarely open Windows Update because the computer was doing it automatically

USAFRet · Jul 7, 2015

When my PC clock reaches midnight, the explorer taskbar shows up at the bottom of the screen.

Dropbox is set to do something every day at 23:57

That's a bit too close to be a coincidence.

Change your DropBox schedule, and see if it still happens.

unplanned bacon · Jul 17, 2015

I moved Dropbox to another time but it still happens. Also told to not start if the computer is busy

unplanned bacon · Jul 17, 2015

I checked again and it reset itself back to midnight

USAFRet · Jul 17, 2015

unplanned bacon :

Then it must be something else.

Jonas Magnusson · Jul 20, 2015

try using ccleaner and look at scheduled activities and which one that goes of at midnight.
also when it boot at midnight, what program shows up?

unplanned bacon · Jul 21, 2015

Jonas Magnusson :

It doesn't boot itself. It's need to be already on for the desktop thing to happen

It didn't do it at all last night, so maybe it's fixed (moved the Dropbox schedule again)

unplanned bacon · Jul 21, 2015

I'm not sure if it's Dropbox because it did it again, but Dropbox never sticks to the time I set. Its now set for 23:47 (a time it set itself, because I told it to do it at log on). Nothing else is set to do anything around midnight, but issue still persists

USAFRet · Jul 21, 2015

Maybe stay up until midnight to see what happens? And not playing a game at the time...

unplanned bacon · Jul 28, 2015

USAFRet :

Can't do that at the moment, but last time I did, it did the same thing. No game was being played at the time. I'll check again when I next can

unplanned bacon · Aug 3, 2015

Keeps doing it, cause unknown still

unplanned bacon · Aug 6, 2015

USAFRet :

Seems it was Adware. Contacted MS support when Windows 10 showed the same behaviour (actually for a different issue, 10 auto-corrupted what I think is a file/folder it didn't even create and I raised this issue with them as well). Cleared all the adware off and checked for the issue again tonight using the same game I used last time. Rollcage continued playing past midnight and no attempts to show the desktop were made.

How did the Adware even get on? My AV and MBAM never saw it (and apart from the odd midnight behaviour my machine was fine). What program can I use to look for Adware in future?

USAFRet · Aug 6, 2015

Glad you finally found the issue.

Jonas Magnusson · Aug 9, 2015

unplanned bacon :

the best solution against malware is staying offline as often as possible and use adblocker on firefox. maybe chrome also has that but i don't use chrome.

Stop desktop showing at midnight

Distinguished

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Reputable

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