thespungo Posted September 6, 2007 Share Posted September 6, 2007 I'm not exactly sure how to google this problem I'm having, so I thought I'd post this here and see what you people think. After awhile on the computer, the system begins unselecting everything, meaning all open applications are grayed out. At first I thought it was just Firefox that was being unselected, but I closed it and was still getting the bug. I don't hear a clicking noise, the programs just get unselected (meaning you have to click in the program again to resume typing or whatever you were doing). The problem has become worse in the past few weeks. Typing has become a real pain in the ***, because I have to click back in the program to resume whatever I was doing. Over the course of writing this message, the program has unselected itself over 15 times. So if anyone knows what kind of bug this is, or knows of a better way to describe it so I can Google for help, please let me know. This is incredibly frustrating... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guildster Posted September 6, 2007 Share Posted September 6, 2007 Sounds like another application is stealing the focus. Run your anti-virus and anti-spyware and do deep searches. Might be worth a shot. Try here: www.annoyances.org Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred13 Posted September 6, 2007 Share Posted September 6, 2007 cehck your running processes. If there's anything there you didnt install just end it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsox Posted September 6, 2007 Share Posted September 6, 2007 I have been having similar problems as well, but doesn't occur as frequently as yours. I have been searching around for answers and haven't find a definitive solution so far. Guildster, thanks for the website, I will see if I can find a solution in that forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thespungo Posted September 6, 2007 Author Share Posted September 6, 2007 Sounds like another application is stealing the focus. Run your anti-virus and anti-spyware and do deep searches. Might be worth a shot. That's what I assumed as well, but I would have no idea which program is the culprit because I have found no instances of spyware on my computer (I run a very tight ship, here.) And I've ended a few running processes as well, even a random Firefox.exe that I thought was the problem, but still no luck. I know about the annoyances website, but like I said in the original post, I have no idea how to search for this problem. "My programs are randomly unselected"? "My programs are deselecting themselves"? Those searches don't bring up the answers I need, only something completely different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkB Posted September 7, 2007 Share Posted September 7, 2007 Hey spungo, check out this KB article from Microsoft about the issue. Knowing MS, it's probably not particularlu helpful, but maybe worth checking out. Also, try a program named TweakUI, if you haven't already - there's an option there to prevent other windows from stealing focus, IIRC. Also, the relevant search term you may want is "losing focus", or something like "windows randomly losing focus". As Guildster mentioned, when you have a window active, that window is referred to as having focus. When that window becomes inactive, it loses focus. In VB programming, I often used the term "SetFocus" to switch the application's active component to whatever it should be, thus making the previous one inactive. Switching between windows in Windows works the same way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thespungo Posted September 7, 2007 Author Share Posted September 7, 2007 Hey spungo, check out this KB article from Microsoft about the issue. Knowing MS, it's probably not particularlu helpful, but maybe worth checking out. Also, try a program named TweakUI, if you haven't already - there's an option there to prevent other windows from stealing focus, IIRC. Also, the relevant search term you may want is "losing focus", or something like "windows randomly losing focus". As Guildster mentioned, when you have a window active, that window is referred to as having focus. When that window becomes inactive, it loses focus. In VB programming, I often used the term "SetFocus" to switch the application's active component to whatever it should be, thus making the previous one inactive. Switching between windows in Windows works the same way. Yes, PERFECT! I knew there was some term for this problem that I was missing. I've never heard 'losing focus' and I've never encountered this problem anywhere before. Thanks for helping out, MarkB. So I turned off text services, but it still baffles me that the text services has always been turned on, yet this problem only started with the past few weeks. Any possible reason why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkB Posted September 7, 2007 Share Posted September 7, 2007 No problem at all. As for the recent timeframe on it, I'm not sure...to coin a phrase from baseball, it could just be Windows being Windows. Any recently installed programs or Windows updates might also have had some sort of effect on it. Has disabling text services actually resolved the issue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsox Posted September 9, 2007 Share Posted September 9, 2007 thespungo, did the solution from the website that MarkB posted help you any? I tried what was suggested but it did not fix the problem? How about you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevieaces Posted September 9, 2007 Share Posted September 9, 2007 This is totally off topic but....Spungo is your avatar a picture of Lemmywinks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thespungo Posted September 9, 2007 Author Share Posted September 9, 2007 Alright, so it worked after a few days but now the problem is back again... with a vengeance. This is one of the most annoying things I've ever dealt with on a computer. I'm not finding a great deal of resources to help with the problem online, so I'm considering wiping my hard drive clear or something similarly drastic. And yes, that's Lemmiwinks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guildster Posted September 9, 2007 Share Posted September 9, 2007 You may be infected. Besides AV and spyware, have you run a rootkit scan? AVG has a good app: http://www.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-a...ootkit/us/crp/0 If it were me at this point, I would backup everything that I haven't yet, wipe the drive, and do a clean OS install. Probably save you time and frustration in the long run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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