NEED HELP: something keeps pulling me out of Elite to desktop while playing.

yodajedifishmaster

yodajedifishmaster
i need some help. last few days i have had an issue of something suddenly causing me to be looking at steam and the Elite launcher rather than in the game (usually in supercruise heading to a planet to scan).
i play in full screen.
i have some suspicions but i cant seem to catch anything in the act. since i am always looking at steam and the elite launcher on top of steam when i come to desktop. so it COULD be the launcher but im going to test it by minimising both steam AND the launcher to task bar - if i get yanked out and the launcher is sitting there i will know the launcher (or steam in same case) is doing it. but this isnt my prime candidate.

AVG FREE: this one has form. i kept being yanked out of games (not just elite but also SWBF once, to see a popup in bottom left telling me i needed to upgrade AVG. now i took that to just be the adverts it does to try and trick you into going to the page to 'upgrade' to the paid version or to trick you into installing its toolbars in all your browsers and change homepage and search engine to AVG one.

so i go tired of this and i clicked the link and it did indeed download and upgrade avg free and i thought 'OK thats done'.

but since a little while after i will be flying around a system and suddenly im staring at steam and the launcher and have to go click on elite again to be playing.

i root around in the new UI (Supposedly simpler to use but actually now all renamed and split into multiple locations, and illogically split at that...) and i cant see anything like game mode any more which used to prevent the stupid thing grabbing focus with popups when using a full screen application such as a game. there is a silent mode which didnt fix the problem. i cannot find any help in google for the current version most of the results are for the old avg from 2015 or 2012. they all talk about advanced settings menu and tools menus which no longer exist. i have not installed half the stuff AVG free wants because i dont want it messing with my emails. i just uninstalled the software analyzer in case its checking the streaming Elite does to servers or soemthing, but it still happened. the only things left are to try passive mode in AVG or uninstall it and i dont trust windows defender. and im not paying for anything after the issues i had with macafee in the 90s.

i am 95% certain its AVG since before the update i didnt have an issue. Firefox isnt running so its not that and i doubt 7zip will grab focus since its dormant until you use from context menu, and there is a chance its something else. can anyone help me figure out whats happening? its ruining my enjoyment since i have to worry about it happening just as im closing in on something in SC and me not having control while i maximise the game. i can see myself being yanked out of SC by too close approach to a body and taking damage and im 10000 ly away from the nearest place to repair any hull damage.

i hope you can help. i would have posted this in a help/faq section but a) i dont see one and b) it might be more useful here if the community can solve it. i just wish i knew how to find out for certain whats doing it.
 

X-Terminator

Banned
X-Terminator
I think the program WATCHDOG which ED needs can be seen as a virus. It's safe and is required. Create a safe list.
 
Last edited:

Spacecat

Spacecat
This is incredibly annoying and happens to me once in a while. Not using freeware can help (it often has nag screens that pop up randomly).You can also try disabling notifications.
 

yodajedifishmaster

yodajedifishmaster
yes i tried silent mode (no popups) but win focus logger showed that AVGuix process would grab focus regularly no matter what i shut down. the only way to keep it would be passive mode - which reduces it to a disk scanner and win 10 then spams warnings about all AV being disabled and on restart or next boot it enables windows defender. it may be shoddy programming or an oversight by AVG (AGAIN!). and malwarebytes is far better as a pure disc scanner only.

i dont get renaming all the stuff you know what it means and splitting up and basically hiding settings all over the ui. before, AVG at least had a gaming mode for full screen apps. all the settings were accessed from the same set of menus, from the same place, and the advanced settings were there also. now they have split it all up and renamed half the settings so you need to go to each of the 4 components you may have installed, then customise, then you get a list on the left of buttons to click to show lots of different settings... and you have to deal with online shield then finish up and move back to the 4 components menu and select the analyzer and set that up, then go back out and click the next one down for the email protection (if installed) etc etc. lots of time, the settings feel hidden now like their popups it feels like they are trying to trick you into click and enable stuff you DONT want. i have avira installed atm but the gaming mode is pay version only. i have spent all night trying to fix avg then finally uninstalled it and the stupid zen which is just an unnecessary extra step to access the antivirus...

its too late to sleep now im going to play some more and seee what avira does. if that doesnt work its avast. the issue i had with avast was it insisted on stopping most of my web browsing in the past somehow, but it does have a gaming mode in the free version.

avira has avira connect which is basically its version of zen, but its not spamming popups like AVG and the popups dont all look like AVG ones which have TWO different options in clickable boxes - both of which still enable avg browser hijack even if you dont want it, while the ACTUAL no thanks is in tiny letters at bottom left with no box around it to draw attention. if avira starts that kind of crap it will be gone too.
 
Last edited:

Mark Lock

M
yodajedifishmaster said:
i need some help. last few days i have had an issue of something suddenly causing me to be looking at steam and the Elite launcher rather than in the game (usually in supercruise heading to a planet to scan).
i play in full screen.
i have some suspicions but i cant seem to catch anything in the act. since i am always looking at steam and the elite launcher on top of steam when i come to desktop. so it COULD be the launcher but im going to test it by minimising both steam AND the launcher to task bar - if i get yanked out and the launcher is sitting there i will know the launcher (or steam in same case) is doing it. but this isnt my prime candidate.

AVG FREE: this one has form. i kept being yanked out of games (not just elite but also SWBF once, to see a popup in bottom left telling me i needed to upgrade AVG. now i took that to just be the adverts it does to try and trick you into going to the page to 'upgrade' to the paid version or to trick you into installing its toolbars in all your browsers and change homepage and search engine to AVG one.

so i go tired of this and i clicked the link and it did indeed download and upgrade avg free and i thought 'OK thats done'.

but since a little while after i will be flying around a system and suddenly im staring at steam and the launcher and have to go click on elite again to be playing.

i root around in the new UI (Supposedly simpler to use but actually now all renamed and split into multiple locations, and illogically split at that...) and i cant see anything like game mode any more which used to prevent the stupid thing grabbing focus with popups when using a full screen application such as a game. there is a silent mode which didnt fix the problem. i cannot find any help in google for the current version most of the results are for the old avg from 2015 or 2012. they all talk about advanced settings menu and tools menus which no longer exist. i have not installed half the stuff AVG free wants because i dont want it messing with my emails. i just uninstalled the software analyzer in case its checking the streaming Elite does to servers or soemthing, but it still happened. the only things left are to try passive mode in AVG or uninstall it and i dont trust windows defender. and im not paying for anything after the issues i had with macafee in the 90s.

i am 95% certain its AVG since before the update i didnt have an issue. Firefox isnt running so its not that and i doubt 7zip will grab focus since its dormant until you use from context menu, and there is a chance its something else. can anyone help me figure out whats happening? its ruining my enjoyment since i have to worry about it happening just as im closing in on something in SC and me not having control while i maximise the game. i can see myself being yanked out of SC by too close approach to a body and taking damage and im 10000 ly away from the nearest place to repair any hull damage.

i hope you can help. i would have posted this in a help/faq section but a) i dont see one and b) it might be more useful here if the community can solve it. i just wish i knew how to find out for certain whats doing it.
Click to expand...

check running processes for anything that shouldn't be there, you can use google to find what the processes are
 

yodajedifishmaster

yodajedifishmaster
thanks to all for your help but it was definitely AVG. the win focus logger showed a process called AVGuix was stealing focus from elite. that was causing my trips to stare at the desktop. uninstalling avg and using avira instead, so far in an hour or so of play, no interruptions from avira. its been told to ignore the steam folder (amongst others) but then so was AVG. anyways, im thinking this is fixed but im going to keep an eye out on how avira handles it when there is an update because it was that which AVG started doing it - a popup telling me i needed to upgrade, which i couldnt stop grabbing focus, except by upgrading avg free to the latest one. which then started grabbing focus for no reason.

im pretty careful with my system and im on top of actual malware and viruses - the other thing i worry about with a new antivirus though, is it onjecting to the registry changes i made (which include telling win 10 not to include drivers in its update packages after it installed a generic intel one for my integrated graphics over the asus ROG custom one, and that led to the integrated driver fighting with the nvidia driver over whether to try playing star wars battlefront with the integrated card or the nvidia. which led to black screen flickers during play.... and alos i changed the timeout on my backlit keys from 30 seconds to something like 24 hours because it kept switching off because i play with controller not mouse keys...). we shall see.

i cannot honestly recommend using avg free if you are a gamer or at least for elite. not unless they fix it so it doesnt steal focus from full screen apps, and lose the deceptive popups trying to hijack your browser home page and install toolbars.
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
I quit using AVG for the same reason.
And Avast.
And Kaspersky. (Pain in the butt to remove!)
And McAfee.
I used Norton once, and it crippled my PC and needed a full destructive wipe to get going again. Never again!

I don't use anything but windows defender​ on my laptop, and I do use Bit Defender in my PC.
Not had any issues since.

Once my Bit Defender License runs out, I'll just use Windows Defender on my PC too.
 

yodajedifishmaster

yodajedifishmaster
my main issue with avast last time i tried it was it trying to censor so many sites. it seemed far too overzealous, far more than google chrome or firefox it would tell me sites were unsafe so i wound up turning off that function.

avira is doing ok atm. it didnt grab focus during 90 minutes of E: D so i think it will do for now. the free version seems minimal which i like but its accessed through avira connect which is another issue i had with avg - avg zen.

why is it so hard for them to JUST let me download a minimal AV? im not interested in fake pc tuneup and i have eraser to do my disk sector scrubbing and secure erasing i dont need avg or whatever to do so many things. stick to AV.

avira even offers a limited VPN which i must admit could be handy but i just want an AV that doesnt demand my full attention every 15 minutes.
 
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