Computer question: Program stealing focus

Factual Questions
1

I have a problem where whenever my wife prints anything on our networked printer the notification pop-up jerks me out of whatever program I’m working on to tell me her job status. This isn’t too bad aside from when I’m in a game. It’s managed to get me killed more than I care to remember and caused a few crashes if the game isn’t very alt-tab friendly.

I did a google search and most sites seemed to recommend Tweak UI (already have it) or a registry edit to do manually what Tweak UI does. I already had those in place so no help there.

I went through the settings on the printer (Lexmark X2650 if anyone wants to know, also I’m on Windows XP all the latest updates) and found a setting to turn off the pop-up. Problem solved right? No it still jerks me out of whatever window I’m in I just don’t get to see the status pop-up. Needless to say that doesn’t make me very happy.

Short of unhooking the whole damn thing and reconnecting it to her computer does anyone know of a way to stop this behavior?

Thanks.

2

Now that you’ve changed the settings, reinstall the printer?

And when you uninstall it, in the “printers” configuration screen, also click on “file” - “Printer server” - tab “Drivers” and remove the drivers there for the lexmark. (Then reinstall afresh.)

3

does the monitoring app have an icon in the bottom right corner?

If it does right click on that icon, should be a way to close it.

does the printer have an ethernet port?

If so setting it up as a true network printer vs a shared printer (my suspicion) should avoid this.

4

It doesn’t have a tray icon. As I mentioned it doesn’t even matter if I disable the status pop-up. It’ll happily steal focus even without changing anything on my screen.

It is a shared printer and no ethernet port (just USB). It’s not even close to where my router is so stringing wires isn’t really something I’d want to do anyway.

5

Lexmark software is evil.

6

What if you ran your games in a different Windows user account than the print driver? You may have to make the driver run as a certain user instead of the system, and frankly I’m not exactly sure if that’s possible…

7

Move the printer to her PC and share it there.

8

This may be the setting that you already mentioned, but from the Printers and Faxes window, go to File|Server Properties|Advanced and uncheck both Show informational notifications… boxes.

9

Well nothing has helped though thanks for the suggestions.

I got a new case today so while I was busy taking my computer apart I just bit the bullet and moved the printer across. She uses it much more than me anyway.

10

GNU/Linux window managers, such as KDE’s KWin, often allow you to configure focus-stealing behaviour for individual windows. I know that KDE is available for Microsoft Windows now, but I’m not sure if it actually replaces Microsoft’s window manager. It might be worth investigating.