Discover How to Fix if Your PC Goes to Desktop While Gaming

Do you have any idea how to solve the problem where your PC goes to desktop while gaming? If not, you’ve come to the right place. This MiniTool guide explores several proven fixes for this problem so as to give you a smooth and uninterrupted gaming experience.

PC Switches Back to Desktop While Gaming

Windows platform supports a large number of games, ranging from large AAA games to independent games, so there are many users playing games on Windows. However, a lot of users are troubled by the problem of “PC switches back to desktop while gaming”. To be specific, the desktop suddenly replaces the game, and you have to click the game icon in the taskbar to re-enter the game interface.

You may be wondering: Why does my computer keep going back to the desktop? The causes of this problem usually involve third-party software or service conflicts, graphics card driver failure, virus attacks, and so on. By summarizing user experience on major forums, I list several effective methods for your reference below.

Possible Fixes When Your PC Goes to Desktop While Gaming

Fix 1. Disable Interfering Programs or Services

Some programs or services running in the background may force you to switch windows every once in a while, pulling you back to the desktop from the game interface. If this problem did not occur before, but just happened after you recently installed a new program or started a service, then they are likely to be the root cause of the problem. Therefore, you can try to uninstall the corresponding software from the Control Panel or disable the related services from Services.

According to user practices, Discord, ASUS’s Armory Socket, Windows Error Reporting Service, etc. may be the cause of the problem.

If you have trouble determining which program or service is causing the problem, you can perform a clean boot. In this state, Windows only starts the minimal set of drivers and startup programs.

Step 1. In the search box on the taskbar, type msconfig and select System Configuration from the results list.

Step 2. Under the Services tab, tick the box of Hide all Microsoft services, and then select Disable all.

Step 3. Go to the Startup tab, and select Open Task Manager.

Step 4. Under the Startup tab, select each of the enabled items, and then click Disable (Make a note of the disabled items, as you will need to use them later).

Step 5. Once it is done, click OK in each open window to confirm the operations. After that, restart your computer in a clean environment.

Step 6. Now you can open the disabled programs or services one by one and restart the computer to determine which one is causing the problem of being frequently returned to the desktop while gaming. Of course, this is cumbersome. Therefore, you can choose to open half of the programs and services at once to exclude them as a whole.

After knowing the app or service that causes the problem, you can uninstall or disable it.

Fix 2. Reinstall the Graphics Card Driver

An unstable or corrupted graphics card driver may also cause the game to minimize and switch the system to the desktop. In this case, you need to go to the official website of your video card manufacturer to download the latest driver, and then install it on your computer manually.

>> NVIDIA Graphics Card Driver Download

>> AMD Graphics Card Driver Download

>> Intel Graphics Card Driver Download

Fix 3. Scan for Virus

As mentioned above, if your computer is affected by viruses, it may cause your game to keep going back to desktop. You can use Windows Defender, the built-in antivirus, to perform a full virus scan and remove the viruses completely.

Step 1. Press the Windows I key combination to open Settings.

Step 2. Select Update & Security > Windows Security > Virus & threat protection.

Step 3. In the new window, click Quick scan to check folders in your system where threats are commonly found.

Additionally, you can click Scan options to select another scan mode.

Further Reading:

The virus that infects your computer can not only get to your desktop while gaming but also affect your files. If you find that your important files are lost, you can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to restore them.

This MiniTool data restore tool excels at recovering a diversity of files on Windows 11/10/8.1/8. Moreover, it supports free file preview before recovery and 1 GB of free recovery.

Bottom Line

In a word, if your PC goes to desktop while gaming, you need to disable background tasks or services, make sure the graphics card driver is up to date, and kill the viruses. I believe you can fix the problem successfully after taking the actions above.

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