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

Completely agree.

They know the issue happened as soon as a Cumulative patch and code was sent to machines to enable "Tabbed Explorer Browsing" (back in November/December time last year). As the default first Windows 11 22H2 image (from September/October) that released did not have tabbed explorer browsing and did not have this issue we are all experiencing.

I think they worked out early on that any future Cumulative patch would not resolve this issue with out removing Tabbed Explorer Browsing. They wont remove tabbed explorer browsing due to it being a unique selling point. They sold this feature to companies saying "its a good time to switch to Windows 11 now from 10 to gain access to this long requested feature".

The reason MS worked out from early on of this exact issue, is of people like my self (IT Admins) and many others whom reported the issue to MS directly via our companies premium support package plus community members (i.e. this original post too!)

The only way they was able to fix this issue currently is to release a whole new OS (23H2), which we have tested and the last two preview builds they have released does have this fix in place.

What's shocking and sad to see, is moderators must see the amount of people posting here, and it shouldn't be left to the community to predict how MS work and predict when they will release a fix.

My prediction will be this will be only fixed when they officially release 23H2 in the Autumn/Fall period of this year. But again, its sad we have to do this type of prediction.

As a side note, I have prevented my company of 20,000 computers from migrating to Windows 11 because of this bug. I would imagine many more companies have done the same. Or they have spotted this issue too late and rolling back to issuing Windows 10 again.

Its a serious bug.

...I still find it odd in that Microsoft not only hasn't appeared to work out where the issue is, but also doesn't appear to have any representative or site providing comments or commentary that the issue has been acknowledged - and what they're actually doing at the moment to fix this significant/major issue. And a rough prediction time on just when it is going to be fixed. This is somewhat unacceptable - and unusual, right?

It's disrespectful. I've been using Windows since version 3.1, and this is the first time I've truly regretted my choice.

Regarding another Windows 11 issue, earlier this year I noticed that Explorer file searches no longer stored search histories, a feature I, and apparently many others, used regularly. After several weeks of suggested fixes from moderators here--none of which fixed the bug--moderators then announced that the issue was no longer a bug; Microsoft had rechristened it a "feature." Disrespectful indeed.

Bad news: 23H2 is the same 22621 base build.

Good news: Just tested with latest Beta with new WinUI explorer and gpupdate will not bring it to front.

Totally agree with you Diplo. It is sort of like leaving us hanging in the breeze. Nice to see some good news - such as from Ace0 mentioning that a latest beta looks promising.

Windows 11 Home updated to version 10.0.22621 Build 22621 this morning, but still no fix. Same ****, different day.