By focus, I mean the the wndow that displays in front and recieves mouse/keyboard input.
I’ve got a new Windows 7 laptop. From time to time, many once or twice an hour, the focus will switch off of the window I working in to … somewhere else. I haven’t quite worked it out yet. If I’m typing, those keystrokes are lost. If I’m playing a game that takes the whole screen, that game will shrink to an icon and then, nothing. I can click the game icon open and continue on as normal. This happens even if I have no other application running, so it must be some kind of background process.
Have I missed a setting somewhere that let’s windows take over control of the screen whenever it wants?
What actual programs are you running when this happens, and in what window does the cursor end up? IME there are certain programs that like to steal focus under some circumstances. I doubt whether it is Windows itself that is responsible.
Does the laptop have a touchpad?
I’ve had to turn the touch pad off for a few users here at our company as they would ‘brush’ it somehow with their wrist(s) while typing.
It is most noticeable when I’m playing a game full screen and no other program (that I started) is running. Of course, there are all kinds of processes running at any given moment but I keep my startup lean and this is a fairly new computer.
No complex shortcut keystokes going on - mostly mouse.
The touchpad … now that is a thought. I’ll have to play with it to see if I can replicate the problem.
I have this happen on my laptop, as well. The ‘click’ option on the touchpad is disabled. Typically I’m in a web browser reading something, and the window just looses focus. It doesn’t minimize the window, though…just acts as if I clicked on the desktop on the background or something like that, even though my mouse pointer is within the browser window.
Something else is grabbing focus. Virus scans and such are clean.
I once had a really obnoxious wifi utility that did this. If you can post a screencap of your running programs in the task manager, that’d help narrow it down.
It might be an update too (Windows, Acrobat, antivirus, etc.) that pops up and asks DO YOU WANT TO INSTALL ME NOW? And then you’re typing something and it clicks a button fo ryou.
That will bring up a box showing the active programs running at the time. Usually, the icon on the far left is the one with current focus (the one that just stole your focus). The window will be highlighting (box around it) the 2nd from the right, ready to switch to that one.
This should let you see what program is stealing focus.
Two more interesting things to try. Thanks. The Alt+Tab is weird. It toggles between windows apparently, so pressing and holding makes Windows zip though all the active windows.
I’ve played with this and it isn’t the touchpad, although I do manage to screw things up in other ways with that.
The one time I noticed it since this thread started, McAfee showed up as the only other program running. Maybe it launched for a scan or to check for an update or something, and grabbed focus.
You don’t press and hold both buttons. You press and hold Alt, then press and release tab. Keeping alt held down will keep the list of open windows open.
I’m wondering if you’re brushing the cursor down to the lower right somehow. There’s a small box there that by default takes you to peek at your desktop. Right click on it and you can turn off that “peeking” function.