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

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-08-16T07:58:17+00:00

    The past couple of days this issue has not occurred for me. It used to constantly.

    If you have window explorer windows newly/recently opened in the background, and then if you do --

    gpupdate /force

    -- then do the explorer windows pop up?

    Just today - the pop-ups happened on my laptop, and also happened on a desktop - with lots of people in the room seeing it occur, as it was during a presentation. The explorer window popped up. Those same people saw it before, a couple of weeks ago.

    The most precarious thing is when somebody might be just doing some word editing - and start pushing some combination of key - eg. delete/backspace, or whatever. And if the explorer window just so happens to popup, then it is not always easy to tell if a particular key combination (whatever that may be) may delete something, or just something unforeseen - negative unforeseen impact that is.

    This is the reason that MS needs to get on the case. But nobody seems to know if anybody is actually on the case.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-08-12T01:09:31+00:00

    Jennifer G (MS Engineer) - could you please talk to the boss ----- and get the Microsoft Manager, CEO etc to write something here?

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-08-11T07:49:39+00:00

    The only way to solve this bug is someone pushing the media to make a news about this anoying bug that has 1 year and nobody from Microsoft is taking care about this issue.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-10T09:41:11+00:00

    The link from @Jacob W. Klein didn't work for me. I believe this is the right one: https://aka.ms/AAjevpi

    2023-08 and this is still occurring multiple times during the working day. It is so disruptive and all the more frustrating because it still hasn't been fixed after so many months.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-07-28T03:06:43+00:00

    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.

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