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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.
My machine which has not had this issue in months just had it happen.
It was fine on Friday Oct 13, I just hopped on it today (Sat )ct 14) to do a quick 5-min task in Excel and the Windows Explorer popped up within about 15-seconds.
There was no, as far as I know, any updates to the system since the day before (other than perhaps an update to my non-Microsoft security software).
Sometimes, when the explorer windows pops up -- and even though I know that it's not coincidental -- there are times when it just so happens to pop up - by chance - when I'm hitting back-space etc. And even though hitting backspace at the time might not be a problem, it always makes me wonder if I do lose something accidentally when the explore windows pops up while I'm in the middle of pressing keys on my keyboard (ie. while doing normal work).
This is the reason why Microsoft absolutely needs to get onto this case. And fix it. Not in a few months time. But fix it now.
i get this too, its super annoying. it doesnt just pop up over browsers either. i have had it pop up over games, like when im playing escape from tarkov. using the windows snipping tool has the opposite problem as this, when you screen snip something, instead of the snipping tool staying in the foreground, it is pushed away.
My system just updated to Windows 11 Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621, but the problem remains. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.
Just to provide a little more detail that I feel I have found out today.
This is on Windows 11 Enterprise 22621.2361 (22H2) which may or may not be the final October Cumulative Update.
We all know that Group Policy is at the core of this, but by putting a computer into an OU with the absolute minimum polies applies I was able to find that an open File Explorer is brought to the front by a Group Policy refresh IF either of these two causes is true:
- You are using any aspect of Group Policy Preference (I tested Files, Folders, Registry - I suspect Drives and Shortcuts would be the same)
- There is any change to the applied policies since they were last applied.
I do note that Microsoft Intune doesn’t ‘do’ Preferences, which I think is partly why Microsoft have been SO unbelievably slow to fix this. Why rush to fix a ‘legacy’ system?
We can only hope that the final 23H2 build, due sometime before Christmas (maybe?) finally fixes this, but I’m not holding my breath.
My workaround that I have chosen to go with for my users is to set the refresh rate to 5 hours. Whilst this does not stop the issue it does at least minimise it for them by as much as I feel I can.
Sam
Thank you for your further analysis and the time you've put into providing us all with more detail.
I, like you, have limited hope that 23H2 will fix this issue. However, it does look like 23H2 is due to bring File Explorer updates in general - see the following vid from May: https://youtu.be/E7vr7NGJi7c?si=92aEfN_cS7-W3rKW&t=60 (use the link, rather than the preview, to skip to the relevant section).
The new File Explorer looks more like Edge. There's some hope that the MS devs also copied the "don't randomly pop over other windows when group policy updates" feature of Edge during the redesign.
