Windows 11--most recently opened Explorer window keeps popping up into the foreground

I recommend checking event viewer when this issue happens to find the cause. The screen going black is most likely not related to this specific issue.

Run winver to check your current windows version. AFAIK, Win11 home do still have this issue, but happens less and not on demand for them.

Win11 pro systems does have this issue and it is repeatable 100% of the time by opening a new windows explorer window, put something in front of the explorer window and then running the command gpupdate /force.

To troubleshoot your issue, i do recommend noting down the current date and time whenever something weird happens. The more precise your note is, the easier it is to troubleshoot.

After you have the time noted down, open event viewer and filter all events by 30 min before noted time to the noted time. Also recommended to save the logs so you can easily check them again at a later date or have the ability to let other people look at it.

Most of the time you can find the issue by setting the filter to only errors, sometimes warnings can have information about this issue too. In some rare cases, informational do also contain information that let you solve it too. So check all errors first, then warnings, then informational.

If you ever wonder what an error code means or how to do stuff, you could always google the answer or just ask ChatGPT or Bing Chat for help or call a friend.

still convinced there's a connection with the Explorer Window thing and my 3 second blackout thing (latest vid driver installed this week and its still doing it :( ) noticed also this week - Win 11 PC goes to sleep but occasionally for no apparent reason it wakes up - gpupdate I wonder?

I used a bit of wrong wording here... with slight issue i was referring to other smaller problems, not this one exactly since i have been plagued with this for a long time too. I have a bad habit of typing whatever i have in my thoughts without ever proof reading.

Whenever I am tinkering with registry and some stuff that might break a computer, i usually use an VM. Sadly this can't be said for most people since they wont even know what VM means in the computer world.

once again today, no issues - it no longer pops up .. this is true on my older Win12 machine as well

(I did nothing to change this from last week when it was an issue, and there has not been any Windows update since then either ... beats me)

You're one of the lucky ones. Still happening on my work laptop - networked. I do have some level of admin privileges on the laptop - but not full privileges. But I was thinking that I better not tinker with disabling any services etc - just in case, because there's no telling whether it is going to create issues in other areas --- issues for the network admins that is.

Here's a question. Is there any way to safely suppress the gpupdate function that's apparently causing this until MS fixes the problem? I so rarely make changes to the group policies that I think I could live if it's not forcing updates multiple times per day.

The "Group Policy Client" service seems like a juicy suspect. I'm too chicken to try it myself.