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

As I reported, my machine that had no issues for months had one last Saturday (today is Tuesday), Well ... it certainly has it today. I have to reprogram my head to remember to shut Windows Explorer whenever I launch Excel ---

When I use Excel each morning I need to launch two Excel files from the Explorer window ... today the Explorer window popped to the front faster than my clicking on that Window to make it pop to the front.

My machine which has not had this issue in months just had it happen.

It was fine on Friday Oct 13, I just hopped on it today (Sat )ct 14) to do a quick 5-min task in Excel and the Windows Explorer popped up within about 15-seconds.

There was no, as far as I know, any updates to the system since the day before (other than perhaps an update to my non-Microsoft security software).

Just to provide a little more detail that I feel I have found out today.

This is on Windows 11 Enterprise 22621.2361 (22H2) which may or may not be the final October Cumulative Update.

We all know that Group Policy is at the core of this, but by putting a computer into an OU with the absolute minimum polies applies I was able to find that an open File Explorer is brought to the front by a Group Policy refresh IF either of these two causes is true:

1. You are using any aspect of Group Policy Preference (I tested Files, Folders, Registry - I suspect Drives and Shortcuts would be the same)
2. There is any change to the applied policies since they were last applied.

I do note that Microsoft Intune doesn’t ‘do’ Preferences, which I think is partly why Microsoft have been SO unbelievably slow to fix this. Why rush to fix a ‘legacy’ system?

We can only hope that the final 23H2 build, due sometime before Christmas (maybe?) finally fixes this, but I’m not holding my breath.

My workaround that I have chosen to go with for my users is to set the refresh rate to 5 hours. Whilst this does not stop the issue it does at least minimise it for them by as much as I feel I can.

Sam

Thank you for your further analysis and the time you've put into providing us all with more detail.

I, like you, have limited hope that 23H2 will fix this issue. However, it does look like 23H2 is due to bring File Explorer updates in general - see the following vid from May: https://youtu.be/E7vr7NGJi7c?si=92aEfN_cS7-W3rKW&t=60 (use the link, rather than the preview, to skip to the relevant section).

The new File Explorer looks more like Edge. There's some hope that the MS devs also copied the "don't randomly pop over other windows when group policy updates" feature of Edge during the redesign.

I have noticed that when it happens, there is an event with id 1500 in windows system event viewer:

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

Same issue,

Win 11 Enterprise x64

10.0.22621 Build 22621

Intel Core i7-1265U