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Firstly, I've been using my same PC for 3 years (minus a few upgrades, graphics card etc) on windows 10 and never ever had this issue.
Recently I had the pop up saying I'm eligible to upgrade to Windows 11 - Cool, why not.
So I've been using windows 11 for a couple of weeks now and I'm enjoying it... apart from one VERY annoying issue I'm having.
When playing a fullscreen application (or borderless window, it doesnt matter) It will randomly minimize itself to start bar, the same kind of action If I were to Alt-Tab out of it.
This isn't an issue with any one program, it can happen in any game I'm playing, or even just fullscreen applications I leave running, such as Heaven benchmark or other benchmarking programs.
Its not an accidental press of windows key or anything daft like that, It even happens when gaming with a PS5 controller, hands nowhere near the desk.
This can happen within a minute or 2 of playing a game, or sometimes go as long as 20 minutes without happening, but it WILL happen and will repeat itself periodically.
I figured somehow another window is taking focus out of my game and tabbing to it, but no other window or notification etc actually pops up, I'm just left staring at my desktop.
I managed to find a program online someone created which logs which windows are in focus in order, so using this program I was able to determine that when im gaming and this happens, the window taking focus is 'Explorer.exe'. which is suspiciously the same thing that is in focus if I just click on my background on my desktop from another program. Its essentially like my PC is just tabbing itself to desktop for no reason.
As mentioned above, ive not had this issue ever in 3 years with windows 10 and its only started happening when upgrading to windows 11 so clearly something new or different is causing this.
Things ive already tried... Disabling notifications, Turning on/off 'Game Mode'. Changing power plans. Disabling 'minimize when a second monitor is plugged in or removed.
None of these have solved this. At this point im thinking of just reverting back to windows 10 for now.
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.
when playing vlc the window switches to explorer
Without deeper analysis, the only recommendation I have is to make sure you're using VLC UWP, which is the edition that is compliant with Microsoft Store policies (aside from its Windows 8 package, which targets an out-of-support operating system and would not have been accepted for publication today, breaching policy 10.1.4). This will help with accountability in diagnosing application behavior.
same problem. when playing vlc the window switches to explorer
This question is still being asked and it's baffling but I have a fix that worked for me!
Go into "add or remove programs" and uninstall all th preinstalled stuff you don't use. There's a surprising amount of programs that just...take up space. If you're not sure what you've installed and what came with it, it's best to start with a fresh install and a list of the programs you'd like back. It's a pain but it's gotta be done.
That alone doesn't fix the problem, it's just an annoyance, but while you're there, make sure you uninstall "Synaptics Smart Audio HD Hong Kong Limited." Seriously it's not a necessary driver, it's just an "audio quality" thing and you won't miss it. Trust me. Once that's gone, explorer should stop behaving like it has a virus. Once I uninstalled that, my computer started working like a dream, and even stopped lagging in certain games so much!
i have this same issue. i dont know what is causing it, but its annoying enough for me to look or a solution. it happens once or twice during a day, the explorer window just pops in to focus, taking precedent over ANY program im running. i can be in the middle of a game, a video, whatever, and if the program im using is on display 1, the explorer window will cover it.
temporarily you can try to kill explorer.exe while playing games lol
simply press Win+R and type:
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
