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

Anonymous
2023-01-01T17:15:47+00:00

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

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-09-17T06:57:15+00:00

    I have wondered why my two PCs which are basically the same .. one never has this problem and one does. The one that has the issue has the UPS connected with a USB.

    Next week I will unplug that cable and see if that helps.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-09-17T03:30:52+00:00

    yeah that absolutely has been debunked already, not that it was a bad idea or anything.

    the problem with that logic is that you'd hear the hardware disconnect/connect sound if that was the case...which never happened
    my mouse disconnects because its got a faulty RGB array inside of it so it surges sometimes whenever i have it plugged directly into the PC, again it gives me that little "do do" sound letting me know it disconnected and i always look to see if it was my mouse because the cursor freezes up for a split second whenever it happens (thank you ADHD)

    my external HDD doesn't do this (my games would crash while playing them if it did because 95% of my games are on the external drive)

    anyone got any other suggestions that we haven't already heard and tried?

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-09-17T00:39:00+00:00

    Turned off "Use AutoPlay for all media and devices" and it solved the problem. Why would you ever want the OS do something automatically when plugging in an external storage device, security-wise it is really stupid.

    Remove AUTOPLAY!

    /rob

    That avenue has come up before, and a lot of us have tested on our Win 11 systems with autoplay 'off', and mine is still off for all devices and media. Had been disabled for ages. And I'm still getting the explorer pop-ups every single day.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-09-16T18:11:41+00:00

    Like "GiNGL3like a sir" replied on January 11, 2023:

    "Thought it might have been worth mentioning, I had this issue and noticed it could have been my external hard drive intermittently disconnecting and connecting. Through Control Panel > Autoplay > Untick "Use Autoplay for all media and devices" and see if that helps."

    I was suspecting this, and pulled out my USB-connected external drive. Then plugged it in again, and Explorer popped to the front.

    So an external drive disconnecting/reconnecting randomly combined with the setting "Use AutoPlay for all media and devices" active is definitaly the culprit here.

    For "Removeable drive" I had the setting set to "Open folder to view files (File Explorer)".

    Turned off "Use AutoPlay for all media and devices" and it solved the problem. Why would you ever want the OS do something automatically when plugging in an external storage device, security-wise it is really stupid.

    Remove AUTOPLAY!

    /rob

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-09-15T23:27:01+00:00

    FIX THIS PROBLEM ALREADY, MICROSOFT

    It's not just File Explorer doing it. I've noticed that Outlook has also started to randomly pop into the foreground just like File Explorer is.

    I also tried the suggestion of disabling gpupdate from running at continuous intervals in the registry, but File Explorer still pops into the foreground anyway.

    This is a completely unacceptable bug, and I'm long-past tired of typing and randomly opening programs or deleting files (or emails now) because a background window I was not interacting with suddenly steals focus, and now this problem is affecting Outlook windows, and I suspect there are other programs as well.

    FIX THIS PROBLEM ALREADY, MICROSOFT

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