Copy Paste dialog not displayed in the foreground or as the focus window

Anonymous
2014-02-03T14:36:54+00:00

every time I copy or paste & the dialog needs me to answer an overwrite, etc... the focus of the window doesn't come to the foreground of all the open windows.

VERY annoying.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2015-06-01T23:05:14+00:00

Sounds like its the graphics card driver causing the issue. This isn't the expected behavior in windows. Graphics cards and shell programs can cause this issue.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-19T08:10:56+00:00

    Great workaround thanks!

    I recently upgraded to windows 10 from windows 7 and encountered this for the first time.

    Highly frustrating and confusing initially, then once I discovered the window grouped next to my initial explorer window on the taskbar it just became annoying.

    I also had the separate instance thing setup previously so assume it carried over from the upgrade - removing it fixed this issue for me.

    I'm not convinced 'by design' responses from MS make sense here - firing up a separate instance of explorer doesn't bring it up in the background - why should a dialogue box linked to a parent instance be launched in its own instance, and then why in the background?  Seems odd - but happy to apply the workaround and return to normal happy user status.

    Thanks again for this!

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-19T09:48:59+00:00

    For everyone still facing this issue (after applying all fixes listed on this thread):

    It started happening again on Windows 10 for the first time a few weeks ago, but I managed to find something buried deep inside the 8.x forums regarding the "foregroundlocktimeout" reg value. 

    I researched a bit and after reverting its value to 0 (it was 200000 or something, changed by an application), the file dialog issue never happened again. Here's what you gotta do:

    Open regedit (Win+R -> write "regedit" -> enter) and navigate to HK_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop open the "ForegroundLockTimeout" key and change its value to 0 (hexadecimal). Reboot the system, use it as you usually do for a few minutes and then check if the dialog issue still happens. 

    For me, it never happened again. The copy/paste dialog popups up like it should whenever I do any file-moving-copying stuff. 

    Good luck! 

    Thanks, this appears to have worked for me.  I'm still waiting to discover whether there are any unwanted side-effects, but so far so good. I'll comment back here if I discover anything unexpected.

    I have this sneaking suspicion that MS are perhaps trying to prevent other applications suddenly popping up a dialog at an inopportune moment, just when you were about to click something else, and that the File Explorer dialogs are an unfortunate casualty that MS can't see a way to fix.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-07-19T13:53:25+00:00

    I've had this setting for  while.  It does not solve the problem.

    Thx

    SM

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