If I am playing a game I can always tell when it is 5:30 pm. Not sure if it is noticeable if I'm not playing, I'll have to try to test it out and see what happens.

I started noticing this a few weeks ago. If I'm playing, whatever game it is, I get kicked to the menu (or a "pause" type screen) right at 5:30. Every time!

Any thoughts about this? Does this happen to anybody else?

I've never heard of such a thing - unless you have some sort of "time alarm" set somewhere! I'd suggest looking in your clock settings.

Deleting my question of where to find that info. I looked in settings and found some info about alarms and clocks, and I opened up the clocks app. Nothing!

Going along the lines of Draclvr you could also check your Anti Virus software and other Malware software like Malwarebytes to see if they are set to do a Scan at or around 5:30 PM, if yes you could change the time that it Scans your system.
Good luck in finding this Time Ghost on your machine.

Thanks, Starcom. I was thinking of something along those lines too - some task that somehow got scheduled for that time of day.

That was also going to be my next suggestion.

Nope! I was just in this thread when the clock changed to 5:30 and there wasn't anything to see. I guess maybe it is just when I am in a game. There is nothing scanning and no scans scheduled for this time of day.

OK, then that's just bizarre!

Yeah, I don't know why all these weird things happen to me. Anyway, it doesn't seem to hurt anything. I'm able to "continue" and keep playing. If I remember, I'll try to be in some other things at that time to see if I notice anything else.

You definitely seem to attract the oddities of computers, oldbroad!

By any chance are the games you are playing at that time are games in the ​​​​​​​Dark Fall series by Jonathan Boakes (lots of ghosts) or this new Free game "Episode 666 , which could explain the mysterious 5:30PM whammy.....Mouhahaha

Starcom, you are EVIL! LOL!!!

No, Starcom. There have been several different casual games and one time Syberia 4, where I had just made some choice and thought I somehow ended the game badly.

Check windows update to see if any time settings are set in there.

I don't see anything on the Windows Update screen but not sure where to look exactly. ?

The only thing I see in the Updates screen is to change active hours. This tells Windows when not to do updates.

My active hours are "Currently 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM"

So are mine, oldbroad. I think that's the default.

Yeah, I don't change any of that stuff since I don't know what any of it is!

one last thing oldbroad, when you went to settings/updates did you see an update with the Letters and numbers:
KB5028244, it an update that you can choose to do yourself if you wish, but according to MS it has several fixes, one of them is: .

Maybe Draclvr can see if this is actually a fix for your problem of your games timing out.

Actually, that update IS sitting there Starcom.

What is suggested by any of you to do with it? Should it be downloaded and installed? I thought Windows 10 just does what it wants with updates and have never changed anything or done anything manual with it. I didn't know I could.

MS will Push it's Important updates and Security fixes but there are Other updates that are Optional and left to the User to go for it, some of these Optional updates later on become one that is pushed by MS as it becomes combined with other fixes, updates. I went for this update and No problems so far, again, we will wait to see what Draclvr and others think.

Thanks Starcom! I did have Windows 7 set up to not automatically install updates but I was never real sure about installing them all since I don't understand enough about them. As stated already though, I didn't even know I could do that with Windows 10 which I decided was good so I wouldn't have to make decisions about stuff I didn't understand, but, I'm pretty sure there was an update that messed with my video card drivers. I can't allow myself to worry about it though. I read up on it but am not about to try fixing it.

Whether you can control updates or not depends on which version of Windows 10 you have. Windows 10 Home does not allow you to pick and choose - all updates will be applied. The most you can do is "hide" them using a separate utility.

If you have Windows 10 Pro or above, then you can customize which updates are installed - up to a point. I just did an update last night. I searched and didn't find the one Starcom mentioned on my machine.

It is an optional update for Windows 10 Home and you can choose whether to install it or not. It was released on July 25 and includes security updates, so I would suggest going ahead and installing it.

Okay, thanks.

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!

Yesterday I forgot to test it but today - no more hiccup!

Congratulations. Well done!

YES! Whew, glad this got figured out for you! Took all of us, I think!

Update: the issue seems to be solved but I tried to replicate the glitch. I spawned a Virtual Machine ( Win 10 ) and installed the free CCleaner and began re-playing some Starcraft 1. ( gaming on Virtual Machines is generally horrible but Starcraft 1 is not very demanding so no problem there ).

Anyway there was no 5:30 hickup but at 5:25 PM local time the game totally froze. Had to restart the VM. Might have been a coincidence. The rest of the time the game plays just fine. I'll make an other attempt some other day.

Why do you want to replicate it?

Fogfighter, I thought about doing that too! Interesting coincidence!

Just curiosity. Interesting to see if a virtual machine with the CCleaner behaves similar.
I have also never tried the CCleaner before.

Please let us know if you make the test.

I'm probably not going to have time, Fogfighter! I'm buried in tomatoes right now!

The CCleaner had been on my system for some time but the hiccuping was more recent so it must have been triggered for some reason, not just that it was installed on my system - and not that easily replicated then.