Something closes my idle programs

[The Ponzzz]

Ever since I got Vista, I have a problem with my programs staying open.

Basically what's happening is, if I have any idle Trillian windows, they close out, regardless if I read them or not. I don't know how long it takes, but I want to say 15-20 minutes before they are gone.

Other programs that don't require me to save anything like Calculator, Solitaire, and other various programs i run will just auto close if I don't mess with them.

I don't know if it's Vista or something else. No viruses, malware, spyware found or anything. And it's most noticable with trillian (which made me feel it was that until Calculator and Solitaire closed today).

Anyone know the cause? I can't find anything searching for answers.

[Celephais]

Hmm... I'm not having any issues with unused programs in vista myself... are you really low on RAM? Just watch your performance monitor and see what's going on... generally if I just idle everything the performance monitor shows very little activity, and it should be relatively easy to spot a program that's the culprit if some rogue program is messing with you.

[Warriorbird]

I do it.

[Drew]

I'd just like to say that I hate Vista. It's been nothing but trouble after trouble.

[Celephais]

I'd just like to say that I hate Vista. It's been nothing but trouble after trouble.

Having just switched to Vista... I fucking love it. Be it business (Visual Studio 2k5/7 SQL 2k5) or pleasure (WoW, GS, DirectX 10 programming), Vista has been wonderful to work with.

[Drew]

Hmm, I've had more driver problems than I care to mention. I hate the stupid warnings it gives you, I don't like the new Explorer.

[Celephais]

Hmm, I've had more driver problems than I care to mention. I hate the stupid warnings it gives you, I don't like the new Explorer.

No driver problems so far, but I haven't hooked up any legacy hardware.

"Stupid" warnings can be disabled unilaterally (it's a settting, I forget off the top of my head).

And I've been using IE7 for a while now so I guess I had some time to get used to it.

At first I was pretty lost, but I love it now... and I'm addicted to the aero glass interface (and normally frilly interface crap taking up CPU cycles pisses me off, but I love this...)

[Drew]

It's not my computer, it's my dads. All the driver problems have been with stuff bought within the last year.

[Sean]

I do it.

Well there we go, if I had to suspect someone it would have been that baby eatting bastard Khaladon.

[The Ponzzz]

nope, I have 2GB and use only 5%-20%. I have Process Explorer running and nothing spikes when they do close out.

I love Vista as well, such a step up from XP.

Is it possible that Trillian is closing my idle windows for IMing and just a fluke with my Calc and Soltaire game?

[The Ponzzz]

Ah, after talking with my buddy on the phone, I found the answer.

Was something in my registry that I had to manually clean out. problem solved.

[Kranar]

It's not my computer, it's my dads. All the driver problems have been with stuff bought within the last year.


Driver problems are the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers, not the operating system developers. This is a major dillema for Microsoft since hardware vendors tend to make really crappy drivers in general and Microsoft ends up taking the blame for it.

[Drew]

Driver problems are the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers, not the operating system developers. This is a major dillema for Microsoft since hardware vendors tend to make really crappy drivers in general and Microsoft ends up taking the blame for it.


People just want something that works. I'm pretty computer savvy (certainly compared to my dad I am) so I eventually got everything running, but it took me about 8 hours, that's totally unacceptable. It would have taken my dad ten times as long, or he just never would have got it done. I know MS isn't responsible for other companies' drivers but it's not like they had a gold version out to other companies long before Vista shipped. They sent out a different version than the one that got shipped to consumers and most of the accessory manufacturers were left with their thumbs in the wind until 2 months before launch. That can be blamed on MS. The launch was really bungled. I was in Office Depot two days ago and they still don't have a wireless adapter that's compatible with Vista out of the box.

[Drew]

Not to mention this computer was shipped from Dell with Vista pre-installed.

[Celephais]

Ah, after talking with my buddy on the phone, I found the answer.

Was something in my registry that I had to manually clean out. problem solved.

Care to share? Incase this comes up for any of us...


They sent out a different version than the one that got shipped to consumers and most of the accessory manufacturers were left with their thumbs in the wind until 2 months before launch.

MS is pretty good about working with accessory manufacturers, infact I sincerly doubt there were any changes between the release candidates and the final that adversly affected drivers... With this release of windows they made drivers a pretty top priority, as in stability... this meant that existing drivers that aren't stable needed to be re-written and it meant for a lot of incompatibility in that sense, but when you get a Vista driver now, odds are it won't crap out nearly as much (this is, as already mentioned, MS's response to always taking the blame for the BSoD, they made drivers a bit more scrutinized).

Out of curiosity what accessories were an issue? I just built a new machine and I don't really have any "accessories", the only drivers I had to install were my GPU driver, my Wi-Fi/Ethernet drivers, and the intel chipset (Matrix RAID) driver.

[Drew]

A netgear USB wireless adapter and a linksys PCI adapter were my major problems.