Applications stealing focus - reg key no longer fixes

Anonymous
2010-04-08T18:42:59+00:00

I want to prevent any applications from stealing focus in windows 7 (and Vista).  Tweakui used to modify the below Registry key to 0.  Then there was a key that affected the number of flashes a "want to steal focus" window would make in the taskbar.

ForegroundLockTimeout

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

This reg key is apparently no longer working.  Focus stealing is a major problem, from canceling/oking window that pop-up, to getting virus's from IE windows.  Applications are still written to do this, including MS Office 2007.  If you are typing an email something can pop up and get the next key stroke.  I need to fix this.  Any ideas, or has Windows completely removed a needed feature.

tags: steal focus apps active regedit

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Apps

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Anonymous
2011-10-23T11:13:03+00:00

I solved the problem in this way:

I noticed that just before the focus was "stolen", the PC got "busy" for a second (beside the mouse appeared the small circle indicating the processor is working hard on sth).

So I started the Task Manager and gave a close look at the processes. I noticed that one process took over a relevat percentage of CPU usage exactly an instant before the focus was stolen from the task manager window.

Since it was a process that I don't need to be active all the time (sth about Vodafone Mobile connection, which I rarely use) I just stopped the process and then didn't allow the process to be started every time I turn on the PC. I did this last step using Piriform's free software  "CCleaner", but I'm sure you can find different tools for this...

This was enough to fix it ...

Hope this helped!

Bye!

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-03-13T15:41:23+00:00

    This is a SUPREME annoyance.  I too found the reg-tweak and was very excited until I realized it didn't work.

    This is ESPECIALLY annoying/inconvenient/bad practice for the following reason.

    Let's say you are in the middle writing an e-mail, or chatting online, or typing a document, and your fingers are twiddling away and a pop-up steals your focus as you type away.  Before you know it, you've told it to "Continue" or "Cancel", or "Accept", or "Close without saving"...and you're SCREWED.

    Yes, it's happened to me on multiple ocassions and really wish you could control this behavior.

    My .$02

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-03-08T10:07:56+00:00

    Focus stealing has been my number 1 annoyance in Windows, since Windows XP. Programs that decide that they are more important than what the user has chosen to work with, should not be allowed to force the user to focus on them instead.

    This problem is not specific to a few programs; almost all Microsoft programs follow this behaviour, causing unintended consequences as a Windows user.

    As a developer, when I am debugging an application and the debugger reaches a breakpoint or handles an exception, the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 steals focus and then receives the keypresses I am typing into another application.

    This causes Visual Studio to display an error, because I am suddenly modifying the code that I'm debugging, instead of typing text into the window that previously had focus.

    This annoyance happens to me several times each hour. Unfortunately I haven't found any solution to this problem and my attempts to intercept and block the focus stealing code in specific core Windows dlls, has also been unsuccessful.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-03-04T14:26:02+00:00

    This is really **** me off, working on something or playing something and when another program running in background open a subwindow or a popup, focus is stealed with all the anoyances that this bring on. why is happening this??? if i am focused in a specific program, why another program have the possibility of focus my attention if i don't want to do that?? Still waiting for a solution, i think i'm not the only one looking for that solution....

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