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
    2011-01-23T21:38:03+00:00

    Right behaviour would be; DISPLAY the window which tries to steal the focus foreground, but do not steal the focus.

    I don't think it should even display. Flashing taskbar icon would be sufficient. If you are typing in a text window, why should another program suddenly come up on top? It should only when you want it to, not when it thinks it should.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-01-22T22:46:26+00:00

    Noone showed an easy way to reproduce:

    Start -> execute -> cmd.exe -> OK

    type:

    ping -n 60 127.0.0.1 && notepad

    Now, in exactely 60 seconds notepad will steal the focus, you cannot prevent this behaviour.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-01-22T22:35:16+00:00

    "Ron in TX" and "JLMZX":

    Your solution does not stop the generic stealing focus problem. Your foreground on mouse-over is something different.

    You type an email word document etc while a large copy task runs in the background.

    Now the copy tasks asks for "replace" and you hit a key since you are still typing your email, and voilá, wrong button pressed, data lost.

    It is even worse when the number of files is so big that several times the "smart copy" window appears in between.

    Makes Win7 unusable since I cannot use the keyboard during such tasks.

    The explorer is just one example, any app can steal the focus by displaying a "Press OK to delete you data" messagebox.

    It a different version of clickjacking.

    Right behaviour would be; DISPLAY the window which tries to steal the focus foreground, but do not steal the focus.

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