Noob Question

Aloha all,

I have the m17 w/ HD 3870 in crossfire config running Win 7 Home premium.
I noticed that whenever I play a 3D game, such as WoW, CODMW2, etc etc, right before the game is ready to launch it collapses to the the task bar - and I have to click on it's icon in the task bar to make it go back to full screen so I can play. This also happens at various times once I am playing, usually when I zone out or a new part of the game is loading.

ASFAIK I have all the updated drivers etc, however this happened also in the version of Vista that the comp came with. A fresh install of Win 7 didn't solve the problem.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated as this is certainly annoying to say the least. Is it a simple setting that I am over looking?

Thanks in advance!

 

You likely have a background program that is causing the issue. Do you use the Protein Folding program or some other process intensive background APP? Something is grabbing priority from your processor.

 

Another likely cause is Spyware. Run a thorough scan.

 

One other thought: I've seen this happen with games set to different resolutions than your desktop as well. Try syncing the desktop resolution and your game resolution.

 

Thanks for the responses - all my games are set to the desktop and I don't have any viruses or spyware running - still doing it also >.< Not sure of what app could be grabbing resources. Have any of you ever heard of a similar problem?

 

Which drivers are you using?

 

8.630.0.0 - the one released on the Alienware Drivers site - I tried using ther newer version on ATI's site but then only one of my vid chips was recognized. After a reformat/reinstall of win 7 I used the Alienware drivers above

 

I've had similar problems and it's probably a background app. When you made a clean install did you try to run some games before you installed other apps?

 

Any idea which app was the culprit? I don't run much accept the standard system stuff - not even antivirus - so I have no idea. The problem is intermittent - can't always reproduce it tho it happens frequently.

 

I've found your problem.

 

Just a quick thought: do you have any gadgets on the desktop?
If you do I could offer two suggestions: make sure they don't have the "always on top" option enabled. To be on the safe side you might wanna hide them. (right click Desktop->View-> Uncheck Show desktop gadgets)

 

You sir, are a genius

Seems to have stopped the problem - for now

 

Gah - spoke too soon I checked the options and "always on top" wasn't selected/checked - back to square 1...

 

Try hiding the gadgets/sidebar when playing.

 

I had that problem before, but it fixed itself.