HELP - BC minimizes to taskbar upon launch

[id10tsyndrome]

Okay, new to the forums but looked around and didn't see anything like what I'm experiencing. So here it goes:

I have a brand new HP OMEN Laptop (15-dc1054nr) running Win 10 64, all drivers are up to date, etc...

About a week ago, I installed Bridge Commander and it worked just fine after install. I installed the Kobayashi Maru (2.0) Mod with all patches and fixes. Everything continued to work without issue. KM2.0 has settings to use the native resolution for your machine so I set it to 1920 x 1080 and still everything worked fine and looked amazing. I added a couple other mods (ships/sfx) and didn't have an issue either.

Now last night, after adjusting properties for a couple of ships using the Model Property Editor (I'M NOT NEW TO MODDING BC BTW), I attempted to run BC to test the edits. BC launched but would automatically minimize to the taskbar but would continue to run.

At first I thought that I screwed up somewhere during the edits I did so I replaced the edited files with the original backups (before the edits) and still BC would minimize to the taskbar.

Since I created a backup of the initial install as well as the install of KM2.0, I decided to delete BC and replace with the installed KM2.0 backup (WHICH WORKED BEFORE), but it also would just minimize to the taskbar.

I even went as far as to uninstall BC completely, used CCleaner to clean up any registry issues after the uninstall, then reinstalled completely.

Even the new, clean install minimizes to the taskbar.

I'm like beyond confused with this issue. Nothing, system related, changed between the last time it ran fine and when it started doing this minimizing to the taskbar thing.

I've played BC before, even had it heavily modded (by me) on a previous computer but I've never had something like this happen. Usually when a mod is installed incorrectly, BC launches to a black-screen, it doesn't minimize.

Oh, I've also tried starting BC in test-mode and since it minimizes before anything pops on screen, I can't do a console dump to see if there are any internal errors.

If anyone has any suggestions or can possibly shed some light on this issue it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks....

[Mario]

Try using console tracker to grab a console report.

I know it's a long shot but try using the following setting as well.

[id10tsyndrome]

How do I use console tracker to create a report?

[id10tsyndrome]

I figured out the console tracker so ignore my ignorance lol...

I posted this same issue on another star trek gaming forum and got a reply from someone that commented that if a full reinstall didn't work, then something from the original install wasn't removed during the uninstall.  With that said, I ended up going thru regedit and removing any traces of stbc.exe.

Once I did that, I reinstalled.  I also used your suggestion(s), as well as adding "-fullscreen" to the target line of the stbc.exe icon.

Not sure which fixed it, me removing any references of stbc.exe from registry, adding the -fullscreen to the stbc.exe target or your suggestions, or all lol.. but it worked and I was able to get it to launch without issue.

[Mario]

Cool.

One thing that might have worked with registry is if some compatibility settings were used on the stbc.exe. These values are stored in the registry so by deleting them you reset the values.

[id10tsyndrome]

Well, the problem has returned!

BC has been working fine after the reinstall up until this point.  Earlier today I installed and tweaked the DJAmbassador mod (Argonaut and Republic) and played several QB games without issue using both ships. Again, no issues what so ever. 

Turned my computer off and did a few things then came back and decided to up the phaser damage and texture file for the DJ Galaxy / Pegasus mod using MPE.  This is something I've done A LOT to various ships since the reinstall a week ago...

Now I'm trying to launch BC and it just blinks and minimizes to the taskbar again.  Thinking somehow MPE screwed up the DJPegasus.py file, I deleted the .py and .pyc then copied the DJPegasus.py from a backup from yesterday.

STILL SAME ISSUE!  I can't figure out what the heck is going on.  I also checked the logs directory in scripts/custom/logs... there is a log for each time that I've tried starting BC after it started acting up.  each one looks the same... (see attached)

I can't believe that I'm going to have to uninstall, wipe registry of all STBC entries then reinstall.  This is ridiculous!

Anyone have any other suggestions or troubleshooting ideas?

[Mario]

Console is clean, this is due to something external. What kind of GPU does this laptop of yours have? NVIDIA or AMD?

[id10tsyndrome]

I'm using an HP Omen 15 laptop running a Nvidia GTX 1660 TI card...  Full laptop specs can be found if you look up Omen model 15-DC1054NR.  I also thought about something installed or running causing the problem but I checked the times between the last good run of BC and when it started giving me problems and nothing was installed or updated.

[KrrKs]

I once had a similar issue, which was caused by *something* altering the settings of the shortcut to run as minimized.

I think it was a windows or antivir update that did this. For some reason only two or three shortcuts were affected back then.

[id10tsyndrome]

Hmm.. After reading your reply, I decided to try something...

So I launched BC, it flickered then minimized as expected.
I opened task manager
Under the processes tab, I clicked the arrow to the left of STBC.exe
Right clicked on the "Bridge Commander" task
Selected "switch to"
Screen flickered but BC minimized again
Right clicked on "Bridge Commander" task again
This time selected "maximize"
Screen flickered but BC minimized again
Right clicked on "Bridge Commander" task agian
This time I selected "switch to"
WHAM, BC is running and I can use it.

Thought okay, maybe this was a fluke or coincidence so I exited out of BC.  I then re-launched BC 4 different times, each time performing these steps and each time after doing so, I was able to play without issue.

So what would cause a particular process, in this case stbc.exe, to run as minimized?  For the longest time I was running BitDefender as my Anti-malware suite but I let the subscription lapse without renewing so I uninstalled it.  So for av/as I'm only using windows defender currently.  I don't have anything else running that is out of the ordinary and stbc.exe is the only one being affected.

[id10tsyndrome]

Oh, another thing that I forgot to mention...

When I go thru this process, stbc seems to be reset to factory settings, so I have to set up my keyboard bindings, screen resolution, etc..  each time. 

[id10tsyndrome]

So since my last post a couple hrs ago, my OCD kicked in and I've been doing some further research and troubleshooting...  and I think I've, hopefully, figure out what's causing it. 

If I boot in selective startup without any services (other than microsoft) running, BC launches without issue.  So I've been been disabling non-microsoft services, rebooting and running BC in an attempt at elimination.  I found that if I disable the "SynTPEnhService" but leave all of the other services running, BC will run without issue.  But, on the flip side, if I disable everything except for the "SynTPEnhService", BC will also run without issue.  So its the "SynTPEnhService" plus another service or services.  I'm still trying to figure out what's up.  But at least I know that I can disable the service and run without issue.

[Mario]

So the touchpad driver along with something else is the culprit. It wouldn't be the first time drivers or external software meddled with an old DX software. Though, you're issue is a novel one for BC.