Windows lose focus, seemingly at random

Anonymous

Since upgrading from Vista Business to 7 Business, I've run into an intermittent issue. Windows seem to lose focus at random. It may be happening more than I realize, since I have to be actively using the window to notice when it stops accepting my input. For instance, I might be scrolling to the bottom of a web page when I realize that moving the scroll wheel on my mouse no longer has any effect, or I might be typing something in Word while looking away from the screen, only to realize upon looking back that half of the sentence I'd typed was ignored because of a shift in focus. If I'm reading a particularly long web page, I'll occasionally notice the color of the transparent title bar change slightly when the focus changes, as though I'd clicked over to another program. I haven't been able to figure out what is stealing the focus whenever this happens, and it's a new occurrence under 7. Unfortunately, it's sporadic enough that trying to turn off programs running in the background to determine if they're the cause may prove kind of tricky. Has anyone else run into anything like this? If so, any fixes? I have a feeling the culprit may be the GMail Notifier or Trillian Astra, since they both pop up notices from time to time, but many (if not all) of those notices typically don't cause problems.

Any help you can offer would be great.

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Anonymous

Hey karpar,

Any third party software conflicting with Windows components can result to this behavior. Hence, putting your system in clean boot state can help in determining the culprit application or program. A clean boot loads only those files and programs that are absolutely required by the Operating System. Upon determining the background application causing the issue, you may contact the vendor for assistance.

Steps to perform clean boot:

1) Click Start, type msconfig in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

2) If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Continue.

3) On the General tab, click Selective Startup.

4) Under Selective Startup, click to clear the Load Startup Items check box.

5) Click the Services tab, click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All.

6) Click OK.

7) When you are prompted, click Restart.

After the computer starts, test and see whether the sporadic behavior of Windows loosing focus continues.

If not, we definitely know for sure that the behavior is contributed by third party software conflicts.

To determine which application, follow the steps mentioned in the article below.

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

After you determine the startup item or the service that causes the problem, contact the program manufacturer to determine whether the problem can be resolved

Having done so, don’t forget to return your computer to start normally.

Reset the computer to start as usual

1) Click Start, type msconfig.exe in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

2) If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type your password, or click Continue.

3) On the General tab, click the Normal Startup option, and then click OK.

4) When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Restart.

Hope this resolves the issue.

Regards,

Shinmila H - Microsoft Support

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74 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-08-03T20:33:30+00:00

So a big thumbs up for frustrated whiners on this forum?? It is such popular sport to consider every software or hardware failure a "known bug" that Microsoft "knows about" and "doesn't CARE". I've been in this business a long time myself, and it's a tiresome refrain. I'd invite anyone who'd rather use a different OS to kindly do so, and let the adults talk here. But they won't. Because Windows is the most versatile and compatible OS there is. Respect.
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Anonymous

2015-08-04T04:39:27+00:00

Thank you so much Shinmila. It solved the problem on my laptop :)
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Anonymous

2015-08-05T01:58:12+00:00

I have to agree here.

The key point for me (although I can't believe it took me so long to realise it) was the event viewer!!

It suddenly dawned on me that something is happening frequently, every 10 ish seconds.....something has to be happening in the background....hang on, i wonder what event viewer says :-)

Anyway, straight away that showed me errors occurring every 10 seconds or so, and the offending application was AutoDesk Content Manager (or something like that). I had recently installed a trial version of AutoDesk Electrical, which happened to install a redistributable of Visual C#.

Uninstalling that distributable didn't stop the issue, but I suspect that it was involved in the error messages, and expected, as soon as I uninstalled the content manager, the problem stopped (as of course the errors in the log stopped).

I just wish my brain had kicked in regarding the event viewer several days before, as this was driving me insane.

Sometimes the simplest of troubleshooting tools are the best :-)
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Anonymous

2015-08-21T22:12:01+00:00

Although the problem I had sounded a lot like the above post, it was not properly identified: the focus of the pointer was lost when hovering above another window and that created havoc.

Anyway, the solution was very simple, and may be too simple for many issues that may appear similar. This is a setting in Control Panel/Accessibility center/Easiness of mouse use; the Facilitate Windows Administration section has an option "Activate a window while hovering the mouse" which must be unchecked (some of the above option names may be off: I interpreted (translated) them from my own windows spanish version).

After unchecking this option, in order to catch back the focus on a window you have just left, you may have to double click it or click it several times. But it is less of a nuisance than the effect of checking it.

I don´t know how many issues this will fix. Maybe it was just mine.

Good luck.
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