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About a month ago Windows Explorer started the annoying habit of routinely moving its most recently opened window into the foreground. Is there a way to stop it from doing this?
For example, I'll open an Explorer window to open a file into another application, and a few minutes later, for no apparent reason, Windows Explorer will interrupt the application by popping its Explorer window into the foreground. The same thing will happen when watching a video: a minute or two into watching the video and the most recently opened Explorer window will move into the foreground interrupting the video.
The only way to stop this behavior is to close all Explorer windows while watching a video or working in another application. Annoying as heck. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Microsoft Windows 11 Home Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621
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.
Despite the frustrating issue that brought us here, it has been a pleasure to converse with many people on this thread over the past year.
Yes indeed. Thanks very much for riding through this one together. It's been so long that it's as if I know you all. Eg. allan, bill, opc, diplo etc. An unexpected community. Pleasure to have been in this together. We endured - and went through the lows together for a year, before getting to the high - which is today. Best regards!
I can quite happily confirm, the latest Preview patch fixes the gpupdate issue bringing new Explorer windows to the front/taking focus.
December 4, 2023—KB5032288 (OS Builds 22621.2792 and 22631.2792) Preview - Microsoft Support
To grab the update you can get this via Windows Settings - Windows Update.
Or directly from Windows Update Catalog:
The update with this fix should automatically apply to all users after Tuesday December 12th.
This took 1 year and 1 month to fix... has to be a record no?
This is great news, thank you for the confirmation @AllanKChambers!
Despite the frustrating issue that brought us here, it has been a pleasure to converse with many people on this thread over the past year.
Same here. but 3080TI. This stupid window pops up when GAMING ON XBOX GAMEPASS.. So this is ALL WINDOWS. FIX THIS TRASH
Windows 11 Educational Edition 23H2
Ver 22635.2771 (Insider)
Desktop image slideshow every 30 minutes
4 monitors, 3 DP, 1 HDMI
It occurred during image slideshow change over.
Didn't happen the next time.
Folder pops up, takes priority and you need to close it (if it was closed before it might still pop up). This happens during media playback/picture presentation that is from a SMB share, or locally saved.
5950x
x570
4090
64GB DDR4
1TB WD 850x
5 SMB mounted shares
Happens on the HTPC too. Becoming very irritating. Unable to gather winver at the time of posting.
Windows 11 Educational Edition 23H2
Desktop image slideshow every 5 minutes
1 monitor, 4k@60hz
13600KF
z790
32GB DDR5
1TB Kingston something or other
5 SMB mounted shares.
All SMB shares are mounted from a TrueNAS Scale server. No windows SMB sharing between machines is in place.
Please fix.
Not sure if I'd class it as an improvement but MS do seem to have got this bug working far more efficiently - Updated to the latest version of Win 11 - opened an app and within seconds Windows Explorer pops to the fore ... I suppose this gets it over and done with right at the start and then ... happily there were no more interruptions for the rest of the day.
