Apps randomly loosing focus for a few seconds...

[M76]

So this started to happen on W10. And I have no idea how to determine what is causing it.

The symptom:
From time to time the apps in the foreground will loose focus, then it is automatically returned after a few seconds. This happens maybe 4-5 times a day, sometimes not for a few days, sometimes more than once in 10 minutes, basically at totally random intervals.

Why this is big problem:
Because it also affects fullscreen apps eg: Games, meaning I loose control which is totally unacceptable while playing a game. I more than once ended up crashing in racing games, or dying in shooters because of this shit.

The first step would be determining what is causing it. But I have no idea how to go about that. I know that MPC-HC will report what application it has lost focus to, but I can't just keep running it in the foreground all day and wait for it to happen. Is there an utility out there, that would log all events when the focus is changed between apps?

Any other suggestions would appreciated.

 

[ManofGod]

Just disable all your startup programs, reboot and see what happens. You sound like me from time to time, overthinking ti to much. Process of elimination should do it.

 

[B00nie]

Disabling any third party antivirus would be the first place to start looking.

 

[M76]

Just disable all your startup programs, reboot and see what happens. You sound like me from time to time, overthinking ti to much. Process of elimination should do it.

I wanted to avoid that because elimination only works well if the problem is reproducible at will, unfortunately sometimes days can pass without it happening. So if I disable a startup app, I have to wait at least a week to have even reasonable suspicion that that was the cause.

Disabling any third party antivirus would be the first place to start looking.

I just recently installed the current AV software and this was definitely going on before that. Unless both suffer the same issue, but will try it anyway.

So the only way is the hard way.

 

[BulletDust]

Isn't this the way Windows has always worked? You play a game > Something fires up in the background and steals focus > Full screen application minimizes for newly focused application?

 

[akmens]

Is there an utility out there, that would log all events when the focus is changed between apps?

Any other suggestions would appreciated.

Very often app background activities are logged in Windows own Event Viewer, you just need to catch a moment after it happened and do so a few times if neccesary until you are certain which log entry correspodents to that activity. But again, if it's Windows 10, then you can't be certain of anything.

Yes, it's a way Windows and other normal OS'es works, when there is non background activity or popup message that you are supposed to see, Windows does just that - let's you see the message, hate or love it...

 

[B00nie]

Your best option is probably to nuke the entire Windows and do a clean reinstall. If you have an OEM computer it might be one of the manufacturers bloatwares doing the nasties for you.

 

[ManofGod]

Very often app background activities are logged in Windows own Event Viewer, you just need to catch a moment after it happened and do so a few times if neccesary until you are certain which log entry correspodents to that activity. But again, if it's Windows 10, then you can't be certain of anything.

Yes, it's a way Windows and other normal OS'es works, when there is non background activity or popup message that you are supposed to see, Windows does just that - let's you see the message, hate or love it...

No, that is not the way Windows and other normal OS'es work. If something is stealing focus, as it is in the case of the OP, they something is not working correctly.

 

[M76]

So at long last I managed to catch it in the act with a small app called focus.

It's quite an useful text mode app, that logs each change in the foreground app:

The culprit was called akamai netsession. Which is the choice download manager of many big companies, so it acting up like this is very unbecoming. I think for me it got installed by autodesk software. But I promptly removed it, never use or would use cloud services anyway.

 

[cybereality]

I get this too. It's really annoying. I could be typing a chat message or forum post, and then all of a sudden focus is lost. I will try this focus app to see what's causing it.