screen flickers and game minimizes

[Yellow ninja]

I am having this really annoying problem where once the game starts, the screen will flicker on and off and back and forth between the desktop and a black screen before the game starts loading. If I play Portal two, the game will eventually minimize but if I click the icon on the toolbar, it will load up again and everything would be fine. But with Team fortress two, the same thing will happen, except the game starts with the toolbar still up. Then, it will happen again during the loading screen and then the loading screen will come back up and the game will minimize as soon as the menu comes up. After that, the game won't stay maximized. It I click on it, it will come up for a second and minimize again. I don’t think it’s my drivers. I checked a few of them and they are all up to date. I am running a dell 14z ultra book with windows 7 64 bit home edition with Intel HD graphics 4000. All my games ran perfectly before and I don’t think anything changed significantly. This also is happening with a non-steam game called duck doom deluxe which also runs in full screen along with portal and team fortress. None of my windowed games encounter this problem. Any help?

[RedberryKitsune]

Sounds like it could be a resolution problem, have you tried setting your fullscreen resolution to a size or two smaller and see if that has any effect?
Updated any graphics drivers recently? Tweaked any settings?

After opening the game, do you click the desktop or anything like that? Sometimes that can cause the problem.
Hmm. Anything press alt+tab or windows key+d ? That will also do it.