Who knows, maybe it fix your 5:30 pm gaming hiccup! Thanks, Starcom!

Your welcome and hopefully oldbroad will give it a try and if so, give us some feedback whether it cured the Hiccups.

I haven't done it yet but I will and I'll let you know if it cures the hiccup.

Okay. I did not install update KB5028244. My regular monthly updates installed two days ago. This update is no longer showing, however, when I look in update history, besides the monthly update there is one that is very similar - KB5029244 so maybe that is a replacement for the KB5028244 but I did not have to install it separately.

Today I made sure I was playing a game at 5:30 and YEP, it still hiccupped me out of the game to my desktop. (Game paused, not closed.) So, that was not the issue.

Well, drat! I guess the mystery continues! I even posted in a couple of tech forums and they were perplexed too.

Just out of curiosity oldbroad, you say this happens right around 5:30 every time? So, would you say that you're playing the game for around the same length of time, prior to it shutting down at 5:30? Also, how old is your video card? If you can, try to duplicate the same up time for your PC during a different time-span, including the game playing (use the same game where you've seen it happen) and see if you get a crash.

Just a thought, but I'm wondering if either your GPU or CPU are thermal throttling and closing down high utilization apps for self-preservation. Next time it happens, go into your start menu, type Event Viewer, then click through the folders and scan the hardware or system event logs. They are all time stamped, so you can look for Error or Warning notifications that were logged around the same time you had the game or app drop.

Another thing to try is adjusting your PC's power settings. If it's set for "Performance", change it to "Balanced" and see if that alleviates the issue.

Exactly at 5:30. Length of time playing doesn't matter and has happened with various games. Video card is around 4 years old. Nothing in Event Viewer at 5:30. Everything else you wrote is too techy for me. This seems to be a harmless quirk so I'm not really too worried about it. Are you thinking I should be?

No reason to worry. It's probably just a glitch in the Matrix.

I wouldn't be worried about it - it's just very curious, that's all!

Gremlins. Benign gremlins.

There you go! Benign gremlins!

Yeah, gremlins love me! I do worry that maybe it could affect something, though I'm not usually doing anything of importance that I can think of. Maybe if it happens while downloading something it could mess up my download? I may find out some day by accident. I have only noticed it so far, while gaming.

It is very odd that nothing is showing up in the Event Logs. At the very least there should be a warning about some service or system shutting down or encountering an issue OR activating a service of some sort.

If it's happening every day at exactly 5:30, then it must to be a scheduled Task. The game crashes may just be a coincidence and don't have anything to do with the actual event/task. It may just be a conflict that's causing you to notice that something is happening at that time.

Another place to check is the Task Scheduler. Same process as getting into Event Viewer. Open Start and type "Task Scheduler". Once you see the folder marked Task Scheduler, right click it and then select the option for "Enable All Tasks History." You can then go back and check the scheduler reports in a few days to see what's consistently kicking off every day at 5:30.

What makes this odd, Trail, is this only happens if she is in a game! Nothing at 5:30 if she's not!

CCleaner Crash Reporting

Next Run Time 8/12/23 5:30 PM

Triggers at 5:30 PM Everyday

I do have free CCleaner installed but it is not a "start-up" program and I really never open it, so what is it doing?

Yeah, that's why I was thinking it's some kind of resource contention or thermal issue. The game crash is just a symptom, unless it's the thing that's performing the task. Is there a particular game that's causing it, or doesn't it matter? If it's the latter then it's probably just a symptom of a different issue, if it's the same game, then there has to be a process conflict in which case it should show up in Event Viewer. I would be concerned if there is nothing showing up in Event Viewer or Scheduled Tasks, because that could point to a hidden process like what keyloggers used to do years ago when they would leverage a PC's email app to send reports to their nefarious creators.

As long as you don't feed them gremlins after midnight you should be safe

Thank you Trail_Mystic!

It has happened in several games (two recent adventures and a few recent casuals), not just one in particular.

I do no know about "resource contention" or "thermal issue" stuff so, keeping your answer simple, does this seem to be something to worry about? I am not a person to go too deep into my system to try to find an "issue" that could be creating this "symptom", especially if it's not seriously affecting anything.

Googled both terms. Maybe DUST. I am not much of a cleaner! But, that doesn't explain the time or the CCleaner thing.

That's it then, it's CCleaner. Really, Disk Cleanup provided with Windows does the same thing, and you shouldn't use the registry cleaner that CCleaner provides. I'm betting that's where the contention is happening. I've seen reports online where CCleaner's crash log report causes issues when it runs. You could get rid of CCleaner and not miss it by just using Disk Clean up.

OK oldbroad, now that you mentioned "CCleaner Crash Reporting " there is an easy way to get rid of that, mind you every time CCleaner updates itself you might have to repeat it, but again, easy to do:
1) Open CCleaner
2) Go to Tools then go to
3) Startup and then look for CCleaner Crash Reporting and from there you can either Disable it or Delete it, it will not harm CCleaner nor your Computer and you Do Not really need CCleaner's crash report .

Aha! I didn't realize CCleaner was in the mix! That's most likely your culprit. I would also recommend uninstalling it.

When I was working with a Malwarebytes tech on an issue with my computer, he had me do a bunch of scans. He told me that CCleaner is no longer recommended and that I should uninstall it. Then later Mad mentioned in another thread that her IT son-in-law recommends Glary Utilities. I downloaded it and I really like it.

I think I will uninstall it since I really never, ever use it.

Thank you all. I'll see what happens and report back.

That would be great, oldbroad!

Fingers and Toes crossed that this Solves your problem, good luck.

I'm glad checking out the Scheduled Tasks helped. That's the thing about CCleaner, there's really no need for it. It's really just an overlay for features that already exist in Windows, just have to figure out how to get to them .

Hope it works out!