What has Focus?

Westyfield2

Westyfield2

Westyfield2

Soldato
Joined
14 Dec 2005
Posts
12,488
Location
Bath
I would just moan at the Sys Admins at work about this, but I am one of the aforementioned :(.

I'm playing around on Windows 7 before we deploy it company-wide, and I have this weird problem with Focus. Found it happening on another user account on another Win7 PC at work too, but none of us can find it on our home PCs so I guess it's a driver or something that's installed rather than a 'feature'?


What happens is that you open up IE, or Word, or PuTTY, or pretty much anything and start typing..... but the program doesn't have Focus. The text your typing goes nowhere. Something else has focus, but what!!!?? Doing ALT+F4 closes whatever it is that has Focus and brings it back to the application you've just opened (as does clicking in the address bar / text field).
Was driving me nuts today!! Open a new tab in IE and start typing... but the text is going into the void of this mystery program until you click in the address bar or ALT+F4 whatever this program is!

Weirdly, it's not all programs. Excel I've noticed is fine - double click on the icon and once it's loading start typing and it appears in cell A1 fine.


Any ideas anyone? I just ran Word here at home and it had Focus fine, so I'm sure it must be something we've installed stealing Focus rather than a Windows system process?
Is there any way of, in something like Process Explorer, seeing what process has Focus?
 
I had it with Outlook 2007 on my previous install, and only when it was minimised to the system tray, but not on other systems or since a reinstall. Frankly it could be anything.
 
Is it doing this with a clean install? If not, you may have to add the required software for your company one at a time, seeing if it triggers the problem.

I don't think I have ever come across this issue before, so general day-to-day software probably isn't responsible.
 
You could certainly use process explorer to see what is running and kill things one at a time and see if the problem goes away.

Are there any other strange interface bits? It might be worth looking in Programs & Features to see if any features are turned on that shouldn't be.
 
I've had a play around killing some processes but it still happens :(. I'd love to prove that it's our AV or auditing stuff causing it though...

Is there anyway to find what currently has Focus?
 
Think it is procexp that when you close something it highlights it red for a bit before it removes it from the list. You can change the time it takes before it removes it and the colour it shows closing processes in.

So if you open one of them and the process takes focus again but you can F4 it to close it, you should see what goes red and then disappears from the list.
You should also be able to use procmon to see what files/registry keys are accessed when you do it as well.

Autoruns is also worth a look at to see everything that is loaded on start up and log in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom