Forums Bug Reports mIRC goes away when I'm not looking

Howdy.

I'm running mIRC 7.19 on a recent Dell Inspiron laptop under Windows 7. (Previously I used mIRC for years on an older Win XP laptop.) This started happening sometime within the first couple of months of using the new laptop, *maybe* as early as the first time:

If I switch among other windows while mIRC is running, sooner or later the mIRC window vanishes.

The mIRC application vanishes from the Applications tab of the Windows Task Manager, but the process mirc.exe *32 keeps running per the Processes tab, and the channel still thinks I'm logged on. If I start up another instance of mIRC, I don't get to use my nick, because that nick is still signed on.

All I can do is end the mirc.exe *32 process from the Task Manager before I start it up again. The people I'm chatting with see "[my nick] has quit (Read error: Connection reset by peer)".

In the course of a two-hour chat session, this may happen one to four times, depending on how much I'm switching back and forth among windows.

Can anyone offer a diagnosis, or tell me what other information I can collect the next time this happens that might help diagnose the problem?

Thanks a lot for any help!
<-----2011-9-27-----MSG----->

You probably have it set to minimize to tray. It will be in the tray next to your clock. You may have to expand the tray with the little "arrow" button to see mIRC. You can change this setting in Alt-O > Display > Other > Tray.

This is due to the way Windows 7 hides taskbar icons that it thinks are not important. Unfortunately there is no way for an application to control how these icons are displayed. You will need to click on the small arrow in the Windows 7 taskbar to see all of the icons that it is hiding from you. You can also right-click on the small arrow in the taskbar to customize the way icons are displayed. I am using the Windows 7 taskbar option "Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar". The next version of mIRC will actually no longer minimize mIRC to the tray due to this Windows 7 issue.

Do you mean that you are changing the default behavior or that you are going to remove the ability to place mIRC in the tray minimized? Hopefully it's just the former.

Same as drum here, the Windows7 behavior with tray isn't an issue at all, it's rather well done, it ignores new application by default but once it's configured there's no problem at all.
I really like that behavior and I think that a lot of people use it too. Removing the feature would be a terrible idea, I hope you will reconsider it

Sorry about that, I meant to say that mIRC will no longer minimize to the tray by default. The minimize to tray option will still be there, you will just have to enable it manually.

Thanks to all for the responses. I'll try this the next time I'm on chat--probably next week. Meanwhile, I'll await the next program update!
<-----2011-9-28-----MSG----->