Games minimize to desktop by themselves

[R]

I'm running XP Home on an athlon 2400 with 512 RAM. For
the last few weeks, my games, (Americas Army, Rainbow 6
III, Rise of nations, Age of Mythology, etc.) have been
minimizing to my desktop at random times for no apparent
reason. I use Norton Firewall and Antivirus, and run Ad-
Aware and Spybot reagularly.
Sometimes I also get a "button" on my taskbar labeled
" - Microsoft Internet Explorer". Notice the four
blank spaces preceding the "- MS IE" as if the name of
the webpage is four blak spaces. I cannot restore
this "button" to open the window, all I can do is close
it. I don't know what it is.
I've scanned for viruses, adware, and spyware with no
luck. It started happening to all of the games at around
the same time.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks
Rod

 

[RobertVA]

If it shows up in your browser history you might find a clue there.