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
    2012-05-20T14:23:01+00:00

    It is hard for me to comprehend with all of the complaints that have the same basis, that Microsoft is unable or unwilling to rectify this issue.

    There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of entering text into a textbox or writing a message to have some third party ap or Windows system popup snatch focus from the task at hand and close the textbox with what ever may be in the box. This happens to me most often when I am renaming a file in Windows Explorer. The shorter the amount of typing I am doing at the time the more infuriating it is when it happens.

    If it happens in the middle of typing ...this message, for instance... there is a pause while the popup opens and closes and the character buffer continues to store the input but the cursor on the screen freezes.

    If I were to design a method to fool someone into answering yes to a question which they would normally answer no to, I couldn't come up with a better design.

    Example:

    An ap that runs in the system tray and waits for the user to rename a file or directory or do anything in Windows Explorer. Wait until the user types 2 or 3 characters and then grab focus expecting any keystroke to be an okay. Then it installs whatever the designer wants.

    This is a bad security hole MS and must be repaired. The user must be given the right to deny focus to all but the active window no matter what the system or any other ap may want to do or wants to tell him. They should be able to pop up messages from the tray, but not take focus.

    The way things are right now anything running in the tray or in the background has the right to do this.

    Windows 7 Pro 64 bit completely up to date

    core i7 2600k gigabyte motherboard 16g ram and a ton of storage.

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