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
    2010-06-27T12:33:42+00:00

    It happens for me with nearly every application. IE8, Firefox 3.6, Word 2003, Trillian, Spotify, Adobe Photoshop Elements2.0  ... pretty much every time I do anything with a pop up (a save box, a print dialogue, an error message), it steals focus, and it's driving me crazy. I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate, so I don't think it's a Home edition only problem as another poster suggested.

    Incidentally, I was never able to get the fixes for XP to work properly, either. I tried editing the registry directly, and using the TweakUI tool, but it reverted back after each restart.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-10-20T06:38:10+00:00

    Then you dont use Windows 7 very much!

    If happens all the time...with everything from MS software to rubbish written by 3rd parties...

    It is simply the most annoying thing ever!  A pox on the smelly greasy spotty virgin nerd that ruined this in Win 7!

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-11-11T23:34:07+00:00

    If you have a way to reliably reproduce the behavior it will be helpful.

    I realize this is an old thread, but there are recent replies here, so here's my easily-reproducable scenario, FWIW.

    On Win7 Enterprise x64, Visual Studio 2010 Premium grabs focus when a breakpoint is hit. If I'm in the middle of typing in another application (Outlook, Live Messenger, etc.), VS grabs focus, and whatever I'm typing goes into the line of code with the breakpoint (which can cause problems with edit-and-continue, etc.). It's a near-daily pain in my butt since I'm often working against a remote database, and step-over can take a while to complete if it's a call to the database that returns a large data set.

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