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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.
Where, oh where has Microsoft gone?
Oh where, oh where can it be?
With its support cut short
And fix times so long
Oh where, oh where can it be?
It definitely surprises me that such a significant issue hasn't been removed/fixed yet. An interesting and surprising and unexpected situation.
I have noticed that when it happens, there is an event with id 1500 in windows system event viewer:
The Group Policy settings for the computer were processed successfully. There were no changes detected since the last successful processing of Group Policy.
| EventData |
|---|
| SupportInfo1 | 1 |
|---|
| SupportInfo2 | 4214 |
|---|
| ProcessingMode | 0 |
|---|
| ProcessingTimeInMilliseconds | 6468 |
|---|
| DCName \some.pat h.local |
|---|
I just experienced a situation where two, not one, opened Explorer Windows suddenly stole focus. Evidence this issue is becoming worse, not better.
Where, oh where has Microsoft gone?
Oh where, oh where can it be?
With its support cut short
And fix times so long
Oh where, oh where can it be?
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:
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
Same issue.
