games keep minimizing to taskbar

This has never happened before but all of a sudden i am finding that while i am playing any game, it will minimize to the taskbar and the game itself is still in play so i often end up dying since all i see is the desktop and i can't open it back up quick enough to stay alive. Very frustrating. These are all single player campaigns and there is no correlation between what keys i am hitting when it happens. I have thought to look for keyboard combos that minimize windows but it's not that. Windows key is disabled so not that. I have very minimal things running on the background, no firewall or anything. Card is updated. Any ideas?

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I just realized it MAY actually be a certain function doing it. But not sure why. I noticed when the game would minimize the right click menu was on the desktop. So i played some more and sure enough every time the right click menu is there when the game is minimized. So it;s the right mouse button that is bringing up the right click menu on the desktop and causing the game to minimize. What i don't get is why thats happening when the game is open ad should have the mouse's focus. So i tried windowed mode and borderless and still it does it. What could be causing the mouse function to cause it's windows desktop function to trigger when the game is open?

EDIT: and it gets even weirder....i noticed a bunch of desktop shortcuts now nave copies of them on the desktop ! They have the same name but after the name is "-copy" w/o the quotes.

hepme said:

This has never happened before but all of a sudden i am finding that while i am playing any game, it will minimize to the taskbar and the game itself is still in play so i often end up dying since all i see is the desktop and i can't open it back up quick enough to stay alive. Very frustrating. These are all single player campaigns and there is no correlation between what keys i am hitting when it happens. I have thought to look for keyboard combos that minimize windows but it's not that. Windows key is disabled so not that. I have very minimal things running on the background, no firewall or anything. Card is updated. Any ideas?

- - - Updated - - -

I just realized it MAY actually be a certain function doing it. But not sure why. I noticed when the game would minimize the right click menu was on the desktop. So i played some more and sure enough every time the right click menu is there when the game is minimized. So it;s the right mouse button that is bringing up the right click menu on the desktop and causing the game to minimize. What i don't get is why thats happening when the game is open ad should have the mouse's focus. So i tried windowed mode and borderless and still it does it. What could be causing the mouse function to cause it's windows desktop function to trigger when the game is open?

EDIT: and it gets even weirder....i noticed a bunch of desktop shortcuts now nave copies of them on the desktop ! They have the same name but after the name is "-copy" w/o the quotes.

Do you have a key on your keyboard like i circled in the pics? If yes, point at any file on your desktop and tap it, you'll see that right click menu popup. Any chance you are bumping that key?

Yes but i noticed it was happening with no keys being pressed, only the right mouse button.

hepme said:

Yes but i noticed it was happening with no keys being pressed, only the right mouse button.

Somehow your mouse click is making it thru the games ui and to the desktop? no clue there

Maybe i was wrong....it seems like right click does it and in fact every time it has happened since i noticed that i was hitting RC. But heres the rub....i set the right mouse button to a keyboard key in my mouse's app so that when i hit the right button it registers the \ key. Then changes that function in the game to the same and continued playing. Yet it still does it when i hit RC ! Of course it doesn't do it every time. Sometimes it doesn't for 10 minutes, other times it does it once every 2-5 times i hit the right button. So unbelievably sick of troubleshooting PC crap like this !