Windows 7 – Active Window Unexpectedly Loses Focus

focuswindow focuswindowswindows 7

Something is shifting (stealing) focus from my active window (active program) in my Windows, as I'm currently using it.

I have the same problem as described in this question, with a few exceptions:

  1. I observed this behavior on (at least) two different computers, so this is not a machine-specific.

  2. One of mentioned computers has Windows 7 HE 64-bit another has Windows 7 Pro 32-bit, so this problem is not specific to a particular version of Windows or to a particular hardware platform.

  3. Sometimes focus is lost for good (have to click on window to continue using it), sometimes it is just shifted to some another background process (?) and returns after about 2-3 seconds.

  4. I haven't been installing anything new on any of these computers for past few weeks (except for Windows Update and other automated updades like Chrome browser auto-update) and certainly mentioned probles started to happen many days after last install.

Current behavior of my computer is really weird and the entire thing become annoying. Examples:

  1. I'm selecting some text in Chrome and actually see, that selection color changes from blue (selection in an active windows) to gray (selection in inactive window).

  2. I'm editing some document in Word, Notepad++ or an e-mail in Gmail in Chrome and edit process either stops for a few seconds (when focus shifts) for is ended permanently (focus lost for good).

I have active, updated and working Microsoft Security Essentials and it does not report anything unusual.

I had a feeling, that it most often occurs in Google Chrome. At first I was so sure, that I was nearly ready to accuse some of last updates of this browser. But it turned out, that I noticed this unusually often in Chrome, because this is my most often used program.

Does anyone have or had similar problems or have any idea, what can be causing this or how to fix this?

Best Answer

As and31415 advised me, I took a careful look at what is in my Startup tab of msconfig program, but found nothing unusual.

It is now clear that this is 99% caused by some external program (though not noticed before and though I haven't installed anything new recently), not by Windows. This is the most important point for me here.

I googled a little bit more and got some ideas / advice, namely that I should try to press Alt+F4 immediately after I notice a steal of a focus. This should exit process that could cause this focus stealth. Then, I may try to use Process Monitor from Sysinternals package to trace the process that has just exited.

This may give me some idea of what is causing this problem.

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