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
    2010-04-09T03:57:05+00:00

    In Windows 7, applications are not supposed to be allowed to steal focus.  The registry setting was removed because it is always assumed to be "0" in the code.  The Windows 7 Engineering Team blogged about this in their "needy applications" blog.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-04-09T14:25:23+00:00

    Gandoron, can you please list steps to reproduce the issue, including specific application names and versions?

    I'm not saying it doesn't happen.  I've seen it happen, but only rarely.  If you have a way to reliably reproduce the behavior it will be helpful.

    Thanks.

    -Noel

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-05-20T23:56:21+00:00

    I had the same issue after installing windows 7. I was able to fix it by going into the control panel and clicking on auto play and turning auto play off off and it stoped. 

    hope this helps

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