A VERY annoying problem...please help!!

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi fellow captains,I have to say the least a very annoying problem that I don't know how to solve and thought maybe one of you have any good suggestion.So...what happens is that when I'm flying some other program or process in the background makes itself the active program/process in Windows for a couple of seconds which results in FS9 loosing it's active status - I see this on the colour of the FS title bar and also the sound dissapears when this happens and then FS9 is given back it's active status and everything is fine again. But...this is not only when I run FS but I see this at other times as well, for example when the screensaver is triggered all of a sudden it is stopped in the same way I would have pressed a key or moved the mouse even though I haven't touch the keyboard nor the mouse.I know this is more of a technical Windows question rather than a FS question but I don't know where to ask this question and I also know there are lots of technical and very skillful persons in this forum so I though I give it a shot.One thought I had was that maybe there is some kind of monitoring program that keeps track of all active programs/processes that let you record what happens all the time and then I could get back and check in the log what process/program took control by the time this happens. I have a program called Process Explorer from www.sysinternals.com but I haven't found a way to record in it so I can get back afterwards and check.I have of course tried ending all programs not necessary for running FS but to no avail. I'm running Windows XP Pro with SP2 instaled.Would really appreciate any tips!!!

[rjsagel 0]

Hello,Try this:After you start your flight - hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to activate the task manager. Look at the active Processes and you'll find the FS9 one and you'll see it's CPU activity. When the "drop-out" occurs, see if you spot the activity or process that is causing it. It will steal the CPU for a while. I had a similar problem for a while with the "services.exe" process and found it to be a nasty trojan that was hijacking my system. I keep a complete system backup (ACRONIS true Image) on another drive - my last good system and a list of what I have installed since. If I have to, I reload the system with the ACRONIS (about 20 minutes) and reinstall the uninstalled items. Once you know what it is you will know where to go from there.Good luck and cheers,Ron SagelNEAR KCHS

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi Ron and thanks for your advice!I will try that but I'm afraid it will be very hard to accomplish since this happens very quickly and only lasts for a second or two, not much time to find this ghost process and you don't even know if it takes very much CPU which makes it even harder to spot in the Task Manager list.But I'll try and see if I'm lucky :-)

[Guest stevehow]

Hithis does indeed sound like a trojan..do you have a spyware program..there are some very good freeware ones out there.i use spyware doctor ,a payware program..but this does the job in keeping these pests off my machine...try Spybot.it's freeware and see what it comes up with. steve

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks Steve, I'll try that but I'm using a similar program called Ad-Aware and I also use an anti-virus program called Avast! and I haven't found anything suspicious with any of these.Got a tip in another forum about a program that can log the start of processes, will let you know if I find anything interesting.

[Guest firehawk44]

"Got a tip in another forum about a program that can log the start of processes, will let you know if I find anything interesting."I recommend going to this site and downloading a program called "filemon" under Disk Utilities: http://www.sysinternals.com/ Best regards,Jim

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi Jim,Thanks but I already got that program and I belive in this case it's more a process monitor program I need and I just downloaded a program called PrcView that I think might be exactly what I need since it will keep a log of all processes that start.Will give it a try and see if I find the culprit.

[Noel 4,494]

For built in process monitoring, use RUN perfmon.exe. HIGHLY configurable for looking at all sorts of processes!Noel

[WebMaximus 372]

I have now tracked down the process that was causing my problem using the program ProcessView which I can highly recommend and it showed to be a file that comes with my printer drivers that is triggered every 15 minutes by design (you can't change this). The purpose of this process as I understand is to check for updates for your driver software...interesting though since I have configured the HP software for my printer to NOT check for any updates automatically...The file causing this annoying behaviour where your active program looses focus because of this file is called hptskmgr.exe and this file is one of two files that are started by another file called hpcmpmgr.exe which also starts a file called HPOSM.exe but hptskmgr.exe is the one causing your active program (FS9 in my case) to loose focus for a second. I now solved the problem by simply disabling hpcmpmgr.exe from starting automatically and thereby the other two files will not start either.So...now I'm a happy camper again :-)Thanks everyone that tried to help me!!