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
    2023-12-08T09:13:46+00:00

    Hey Diplocaulus

    I bet you did not think when creating this post, that you would get over 500 replies of support from the community. And sadly only a handful of generic - "rebuild your machine" - type replies from MS moderators.

    Fair play to you!

    Though I am fearful, if we see you post another bug in the future, you just know its going to be another epic one again, I wouldn't expect anything less now ;-)

    Thank you all for your time and effort on this issue.

    Personally, this bug and this forum, helped my company prevent the roll out of Windows 11 to 10,000 machines.

    Now this is fixed, and we hope this fix stays in place for the foreseeable future, we may now revisit the idea to start using Windows 11 at our place. But the "lack" of support and speed on this fix has really dented our faith to use Windows 11 in a Corporate Environment.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-12-08T14:53:35+00:00

    Same exact issue... I'm an electrical engineer working in AutoCad constantly - fullscreen and this will happen when im drawing precision lines, extremely frustrating...

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-12-11T11:48:11+00:00

    I also have this issue with my new Laptop.Windows 11 Pro Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-12-13T11:55:02+00:00

    I am pleased to report that with the public release of build 22631.2861 (The December 2023 Cumulative Update) the pop-up File Explorer issue does look to be fixed. Thank you Microsoft for finally sorting this. Please can you spend less time on widgets and put more effort into sorting out problems like this.

    As a farewell comment I'll just ask..

    Will File Explorer EVER be able to handle long file paths? ;)

    Sam

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-12-14T18:40:06+00:00

    Hey Diplocaulus, brother...it's a sealed deal...no more... 🥹 no more random FE popups. Now what to do with my life.

    Group Hug!

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