Vista prevent steal focus

Read through our How to Talk to Tech Support for help properly communicating the problem. Last, but not least, you can always try a third-party, anti-focus-stealing tool, of which there are a few:. Windows should now stop stealing focus while you're not using them. As mentioned at the start of this piece, Windows XP actually allowed for focus stealing if one specific value in the Windows Registry was set in a specific way. Following the short tutorial below, you can manually change that value to the one that prevents programs from stealing focus in Windows XP.

Changes to the Windows Registry are made in these steps. Take great care in making only the changes described below. It's recommended that you back up the registry keys you're modifying in these steps as an extra precaution.

Open Registry Editor. Select the Desktop key under Control Panel. Those are zeros in that value, not 'o' letters. Hexadecimal doesn't include the letter o and so they wouldn't be accepted, but it should be mentioned nonetheless. Select OK and then close Registry Editor. Restart your computer so the changes you made can take effect. From this point forward, programs you run in Windows XP should no longer steal the focus from the window that you're currently working in.

If you're not comfortable making manual changes to the Windows Registry yourself, a program from Microsoft called Tweak UI can do it for you. Once installed, head to Focus under the General area and check the box to Prevent applications from stealing focus. Honestly, though, if you're careful, the registry-based process explained above is perfectly safe and effective. You can always use the backup you made to restore the registry if things don't work out.

Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. You could probably create a. I agree that would be a pain, but it would save you from having to manually launch regedit and migrate to that key every time, with the potential to mess up the registry and crash your system completely.

And you might want to look into Aero Shake which is a "hidden" feature in Win 7. Maybe it will help control focus without having to edit the registry all the time. I'll let you know if I know a solution although I think that I'll have to take the reg-script all the time. Ok, this is another solution to this problem. Although changing foreground locktimeout back to it's default value also worked quite well I've written a script which, when caps lock stole focus again, I just applied and everything worked fine again.

But I think your solution is the more elegant and more colorful one :. I've also tried it and so far it works quite well, as no Caps-Lock-Indicator is displayed any more. Glad you found it useful :. Yes, I did try other values. As you said it is 4 by default, so I changed it to 1 initially and found my problem was solved.

For completeness sake I also tried 0, 2 and 3. You got it fine shadowrunner, but I should mention fr anyone else that after setting this registry key you should either restart, or just kill the quickset. Browse Community. Productivity Software. Turn on suggestions. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Showing results for.

Search instead for. Did you mean:. Last reply by AllanPen Solved. Such a small change would make that many customers happy and Dell still isn't doing anything, poor, as it would be a really small change to the program I know it, as I'm a programmer myself Thanks in advance, hopefully you know more.

All forum topics Previous Topic Next Topic. Solutions 2. Accepted Solutions. Since the main window thread is locked when the Imaging App is opened it should not prevent the stealing of focus. This was true in XP so it does not happen at all on XP. Vista's DWM is generally better than XP because it treats windows as containers, it just causes problems in this scenario. I have no idea what you mean by "locked" in this context. The window manager doesnt care if the thread that owns the foreground is pumping messages.

The no-steal-foreground does not rely on the current foreground window owning thread pumping messages to inhibit foreground theft. Sorry I meant to use the word "Blocked". As in the window does not accept any input until the dialog is closed. You have disabled the application window before launching the imaging application?

Disabled windows cannot have foreground activation, so disabling the window will cause the window manager to try and find another window to give the foreground to - a random enabled top level window will be chosen. Create a dialog with no controls just showing the text "Launching Imaging Create this dialog modally when launching imaging - it will disable your main frame window, but keep foreground activation on the current thread so the launched app should retain the ability to take foreground.

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