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
    2023-05-08T09:14:30+00:00

    3 for 3, exact timing,

    "The Group Policy settings for the user were processed successfully. There were no changes detected since the last successful processing of Group Policy."

    I'll stop spamming now... seems fairly apparent it's related to the application of group policy (for me) even though nothing is changing.

    So i just checked the event viewer when this happened to me just right now. This happened on my work computer that is connected to AD DS and Azure AD.

    For me at least, what you found seems to be valid. Maybe something is wrong with the GPO update or something?

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-05-05T05:59:21+00:00

    agree…this is something they somehow mastered in windows 3.0 - it’s the most basic concept behind floating overlapping windows. there’s zero excuse for this.

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    4 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2023-05-05T01:00:13+00:00

    It's still happening to me. Does Microsoft actually know what's going on here? I have never encountered this sort of thing ever, on any operating system. And here, it's happened to lots of people. What's going on here? Surely Microsoft can set up their own computer and run their special monitoring software to see what is triggering this thing, and then fix it right away.

    When we get a new operating system - in this modern times, we just expect at least 'normal' operation. We don't expect glitches like this that shouldn't even be happened. It's like taking a significant step backwards.

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    2 people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2023-05-04T16:42:51+00:00

    3 for 3, exact timing,

    "The Group Policy settings for the user were processed successfully. There were no changes detected since the last successful processing of Group Policy."

    I'll stop spamming now... seems fairly apparent it's related to the application of group policy (for me) even though nothing is changing.

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    2 people found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2023-05-04T16:09:06+00:00

    Thank you for the info and sharing. I tried to follow up via the links you posted, but https://aka.ms/AAjglx2 simply opens Microsoft Bing, and https://aka.ms/AAi70bz opens the Feedback Hub with the message: "Your account doesn't have access to this feedback."

    That said, like everyone else I just want Microsoft to fix this. All day long I work at my computer (I'm a computer graphics animator) and all day long Explorer windows keep interrupting my work.

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