Windows not coming to the front

Anonymous
2015-02-24T16:02:00+00:00

Recently, when I click on a running program in the taskbar, it is anyones guess if it will come to the front.  Google chrome behind Blizzard desktop launcher, neither clicking on the program in the taskbar nor clicking on the parts of the window visible to the side of the launcher bring it to the top.  Malwarebytes window open, world of warcraft on top of it, click it and it won't come to the front for several clicks.  Once it is on front, now clicking on wow wont bring wow to the front.  GOM media player, 3 windows open, click torrent client, comes to the front on top of 2 out of three of the gom windows.  Windows explorer windows open browsing files, bring chrome to the front on top of it, clicking explorer in the taskbar will not bring it to the front.  It seems to be totally random.  I ran malwarebytes and got rid of some adware, and for a minute it seemed like that had fixed it.  An hour later and it is happening again.  Spotify on top of file folder window, clicking explorer does not come to the front.

Any help?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Anonymous
2016-01-02T09:36:13+00:00

I had same problem under windows 10 x64

Tried scf/scannow but no results, the below link solved the problem(although SCF showed corrupted files) 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_7-windows\_programs/newly-opened-programemail-does-not-open-in-front/fe587f90-5815-4d4a-81b5-55325019af1d

1.      Go to start and type regedit.exe.

2.      Navigate to the following location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.

3.      Double click the 'ForegroundLockTimeout' key. Change the notation to decimal.

4.      The default value should be 200000 millisecond in decimal, or 200 seconds. Click OK.

5.      Restart your computer and check if the issue persists.

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-01-05T09:46:19+00:00

    You are right. Changing anything and reboot may be harmful. Thus I carefully wrote down may changes to be able to redo them. The bad thing is that a company like Microsoft leaves us alone with guessing aboiut making their operating system work. I do not understand why any window should be blocked from coming to foreground for more than 3 minutes by default (which is suggested by ForegroundLockTimeout=200000).

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-01-05T23:31:32+00:00

    They make $billions yet they cannot make their OS do the very basic things it was designed for. Folder operation is still buggy. I had to reinstall my OS few time because the windows would not boot because of a incompatible driver after their updates. They expect people to have PhD to fix basic stuff, even the IE is too complex even for the professional to work out. They expect people pay for their mistake by paying for their support. What infuriates me is  all offices use MS and people spend years learning their system and then some clever so and so in MS screws up everything by moving things around so the poor employee has to re learn everything costing the industry billions. MS things their OS is a luxury toy then can mess about with. They do nor realize that people work with it. that is their job. They charge a fortune for their OS and Office so people copy them illegally. If you use Stack Overflow which is for programmers, 90% say I have spend a week trying to solve this bug etc. All because they cannot create a system that is stable. I could go on for every about this.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-01-17T19:13:04+00:00

    Hi. 

    Thanks so much for this. It fixed the problem - however when I started up my computer again the next day the problem had come back. I browsed to the right place and the option had somehow gone back to hexadecimal. How can I make this fix permanent?

    Thanks in advance.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-01-18T09:08:37+00:00

    This fix worked perfectly for me until Microsoft installed the next update. The HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop key\ForegroundLockTimeout is still at 0 but it does not help anymore. Very strange.

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