Issue: Something's starting and instantly closing regularly in taskbar

jjensson · 07 Mar 2021

A couple of days ago i started having a weird and annoying issue. I've done malware-scans with Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, so i'm sure it's not something evil. Besides, i'm always very careful and have a very hygienic system. :)

The issue happens every couple of minutes on Win10 Pro: Something opens automatically and instantly closes, so i can't see what it is. Just seeing the flicker of the taskbar and it's gone when i look up (i have the taskbar on the top).

Very annoying: My screensaver doesn't start anymore, because it gets reset by this mysterious issue. And when i'm watching a movie in fullscreen, no matter if YT or VLC player, the taskbar always flashes into fullscreen and startles me.

I have not installed anything new the past days. Maybe it's a new Win10 bug? Please help me with some suggestions how to narrow down the culprit.

spunk · 07 Mar 2021

Download Autoruns by Sysinternals. This will tell you what is starting with Windows and you can see anything that is not familiar.
You can also right click the Taskbar, start the Task Manager and go to the Startup tab and Disable everything there except Windows Security

jjensson · 07 Mar 2021

Thanks! I thought that maybe there is a software that can log what is starting and closing, and if i see the taskbar flashing, i can quickly look what it was.

I haven't found anything unusual in the autostarts. Autoruns has a column "timestamp", but it seems i cannot sort by column, it's not clickable.

Maybe i should record my screen, so i can catch it in slow motion?

spunk · 07 Mar 2021

In Autoruns, if you don't see anything in the Everything tab, select Scheduled Tasks and Explorer. Under Options on the toolbar, you can put a check to Hide Microsoft Entries to narrow the search.

W10 Tweaker · 07 Mar 2021

This is an excellent tutorial on using Autoruns.

Advanced Autoruns Tutorial - How to disable programs that start with Windows - YouTube

You also might just jump ahead and try a clean boot.

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

jjensson · 07 Mar 2021

Guys, thank you, but i just narrowed it down the hard way.

I researched and found a program called OBS Studio. I captured my desktop on video until it happened. Then i viewed the video at 50% speed, and low and behold - it's an Oculus icon.

Now the next step will be to find out what part of the Oculus software does this, and why. I have two suspicions already.

exzo · 07 Mar 2021

Disable your vm

jjensson · 07 Mar 2021

Virtual Machine? I don't use any.

Found the culprit though. Actually it was my fault. I had done the workaround for preventing the update of the Oculus software (renaming a folder and adding two extra files into the Oculus main folder). It seems that the software indeed couldn't update, but it tried every couple of minutes. I removed the workaround, updated the Oculus software and haven't seen the issue for hours now.