Half Life II and Counter Strike (Valve)

Ever since I downloaded the latest upgrade from Valve I’ve been having problems with Half Life II and Counter Strike.

Counter Strike: About every 20 minutes of playing my screen will go to minimize. I click on bottom toolbar, to maximize it, and it comes back on for another 20 minutes. This happens whether I’m playing, going between maps or when I’m dead.

Half Life II: About the same problem as CS but I don’t always get it to come back on. Usually I can get it to come back if I click it and hit ‘ESC’. Than I hit resume game. Most time it just kicks me out of the game and I loose everything after the last save.

Anyone have this same , or similar problem? If so, let me know what you did to fix.

BTW, I have all the latest upgrades to my video card.

Thanks in advance.

Have you run a spyware/virus check?

I had this same problem last summer and the cause of it was a virus or trojan or something of that nature. I was able to monitor my processes on my second monitor while I played and watched to see which process jumped up to the top of the CPU usage. For me, the process name was a random set of numbers and letters. A virus scan should fix it, but I (feeling gutsy) went into the Windows directory and was able to find the files with the associated names and deleted them. Everything turned out ok, but in hinds sight, that was probably not the best way to do it.
Eric

Have you run a spyware/virus check?

Yes I have. I have Norton Internet Security 2006 installed. I’ve also ran two Spyware programs. Ad-Aware SE Personal and Spyware Doctor. None of these has found any Viruses or Spyware yet I still have problems :mad:

Any other ideas?