I thought I would share the answer to this problem that I found.

I was having a problem with full screen games randomly minimizing to the taskbar. My first thought was that there was a problem with Winstep Xtreme, but I thought I would investigate further before posting my problem here.

I remembered the program ForeTester from reading other posts in this forum. I downloaded the program and ran it every time I booted my computer. It took several days for the problem to appear, but it finally did and I was surprised at the result.

ForeTester reported that the scheduled task "CCleanerBugReport" was the problem. I found out from the CCleaner Forums that this task momentarily opens a command window when it runs. This is a known bug and CCleaner is working on a solution. The simple solution for the time being was to reschedule "CCleanerBugReport" to run at startup. That way it is finished before I run any programs.

So even though it can be somewhat annoying reading NEXTER's often repeated answer, "Search the forums first before posting", he is right. There is a lot of good information there, and you might just learn more about your computer and the applications you use. Operating systems and applications are getting more complex and changing so often that conflicts are becoming more common. Forums are a great place to increase your computer knowledge.

NEXTER you will notice that I did underline somewhat.

I'm sure your excellent post will - especially over time - prove of great interest to a lot of users here Nezbit.

And indeed, I did notice the underlining, but also the capitalisation of my handle.

I capitalized your handle because that is the way it appears in the forums. I hope I didn't commit a dreaded forum faux pas.

I forgot to mention the reason I was surprised at the ForeTester output. I am running the portable version of CCleaner because I don't want it writing to the registry or running scheduled tasks in the background. I guess it isn't as portable as I thought.

Years ago I was dual booting Windows XP and Ubuntu. I couldn't get my TV Card to work with Ubuntu. The Linux forums back then could be somewhat hostile towards newbies and Windows users - I was both. I cautiously posted my question and hoped for the best. I was surprised when 10 minutes later I got a reply with a very simple fix for my problem. I quickly thanked her for the reply and jokingly added that I had seen the reply "Google it" so many times in the forums that I was beginning to think it was a Linux command. I guess I should have realized that in Ubuntu it would have been $ sudo Google-it.

Nah, no forum or other faux pas. The capitalised appearance in your browser must be browser related as it doesn't happen here with TOR Browser in both Linux and Windows, and ditto with Mullvad Browser which I very occasionally have used for the board. (The latter I'm really just testing for an addendum to my Security and Privacy article.)

Ah yes, portable versions of apps - I use them myself whereever available, both in Linux and Windows, but the latter always still write to the registry, alas. The main portable apps I use are Veracrypt, DoubleCommander, and at present also aforementioned Mullvad Browser, the latter being a portable by default in both Linux and Windows. I normally delete their Win registry entries after use, although I've never had any problems, touch wood.

"$ sudo Google-it" - LOL! Wish there were a command going "$ sudo Google kill kill kill"

Apart from the more cliquish of the smaller Linux distros' forums - which can still be quite abrasive towards newbies and Linux + Windows users especially - generally, things have become much more user friendly over the years, and many people realise that for some things, some people (myself included, alas) still do need Windows (even if only for the software for their digital cameras!). However, many moderators and admins don't mess around and don't stand for any nonsense, like people not having read the rules and not following them to the letter, not doing searches first before asking silly questions, etc. Warnings and bans are much more liberally dished out in some forums than even 'dread I' do.

Good to read that you got quick help with your problem there! But then the Ubuntu forum tends to be one of the more active ones, with users usually mostly logged in and quick to help if they can. That said, it isn't my favourite forum, it somehow lacks in the community spirit department. (Not that, alas, we have much of it here these days, apart from a very few users. )

I also hate using Google because of privacy concerns. Unfortunately for the things that I search for, Google seems to give the best results.

About a year ago, when searching for something that Google did not politically/morally agree with, I noticed that I got very few relevant results. I also noticed some things that I easily found several years ago, computer related stuff, now seemed to have vanished from the internet according to Google.

I then remembered an article I read about a Russian search engine, Yandex. The article had good things to say about Yandex, but because it was a Russian company, they advised caution when using it. So I booted up my Linux Live Flash Drive and headed over to Yandex. Amazingly Yandex had lots of links for the things Google did not agree with, and the things that seemed to have vanished from the internet were easily found.

I don't use Yandex a lot, but if I'm having trouble finding something on Google - or any other search engine, it often is available on Yandex.

Now after writing this I'm sure that my name is on Vladimir Putin's "Friends of Russia" list, and that Google has reported me to Homeland Security. The Winstep website will be monitored 24/7, and Jorge Coelho will be forced to install a backdoor in all his software.

I just came across this article this morning listing "The Complete List of Alternatives to All Google Products."

https://www.techspot.com/article/2752-a ... ernatives/

It looks like the Anti-Google Movement is growing.

Well, there are other good, privacy-respecting search engines - incidentally covered in my first addendum to the 'Online Security and Privacy - Windows 101' article coming soon. For now, I'll just say that DuckDuckGo - and in TOR Browser, DuckDuckGoOnion - does extremely well on the huge variety of searches that I do, no ads/sponsored links, just straight to the beef.


Ha! Funny you should mention Yandex - included in aforementioned addendum. It is pretty good and can find the more obscure things more easily, and from my experience, it's fairly innocuous too - at least, nothing that TOR or Firefox can't stop easily.



LOLOL! Oh shit, now we're both compromised! We should demand that Jorge goes open source so we'd be able to find out if any funny business is going on!

Ooh, that's useful, thanks @Nezbit. I hope a lot of folks will see this. I must check it out myself when I get a chance. And yes indeed, the Anti-Google and Pro-Privacy/Pro-Security movement is definitely growing, albeit still slowly. The more people finally wake up to all this the better - if they don't, we'll all end up in a totalitarian surveillance dictatorship!

The awareness of the importance of privacy and security is most decidedly spreading - witness the phenomenal increase in the number of views of my article 'Online Security & Privacy (Windows) 101' HERE, now fast approaching 100K views!

Thanks for your excellent article nexter. It is a definite must-read.

Thank you Nezbit. Sadly, it's only the briefest introduction to a very, very large topic, but I hope a few upcoming appendices will help a lot more. The very high number of recent views especially seems to indicate a great and growing interest in the subject, and although in forums one cannot really deal with it in a fully comprehensive and exhaustive manner, it may just form the germ of a future book or e-book - time will tell.