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Sometimes, when I select a click a program on the Windows 7 taskbar it won't appear (it doesn't gain focus and remains behind other open windows), and the icon will flash and turn orange. This happens reasonably frequently, and I've had it happen on two separate Windows installs on different machines. It just happened now and the only programs I have with active windows are Chrome, WMP and Explorer (2). It happened when I clicked Explorer.
Once this has happened to one window, it affects all windows, and the only way I can switch between programs is by finding the window manually or using Windows+Tab. The only way I've come across to get the computer to snap out of this annoying behaviour is to restart the machine. Is there a way of stopping it?
fredley
Posted 2011-01-22T13:16:54.640
Reputation: 3 197
1I think this is a bug in Explorer... it's happened to me too, randomly. – user541686 – 2012-02-04T22:35:07.087
1This appears to be focus stealing prevention not working correctly in Windows 7. This isn't exclusive to Explorer but is likely to be a problem with the Desktop Window Manager. – bwDraco – 2012-02-05T03:52:51.070
Happened to my girlfriend's laptop, she never restarted her laptop (only hibernating and resuming) for weeks, and it disappear upon restarting. And what do you know, it just happened to me too, in a fresh install to boot, and restarting Explorer (I used the Ctrl-Shit-RightClick Start menu to exit it, but I suppose simply end tasking would do) fix it. But yeah, maybe it will happen again after long running. – Martheen Cahya Paulo – 2012-03-14T03:41:47.467
@fredley did any of the answers solve your problem, else we might as well close it – Ivo Flipse – 2012-07-15T18:42:48.613
Could you try to close some programs from the tray? They may be interfering with the normal behaviour of the taskbar. I've also read that having certain usb devices connected during startup may cause the problem. – Geeklab – 2011-03-25T20:02:05.853
Which USB devices? I'd be interested to see your source for that information. – fredley – 2011-03-25T22:02:53.330
3I had this problem, and it turned out that a systray menu was opened but not closed, and closing it fixed the problem. For me, it was "Apache Monitor" -- I had accidentally opened the context menu and then somehow left it open, and this caused the flashing buttons problem. Once I discovered it was open, I was able to close it and the problem went away. – ken – 2012-11-27T21:34:07.470
Had this problem over remote desktop. Clicking the "Show Desktop" button solved it for me. edit. Killing and restarting explorer.exe did not help. – thomasa88 – 2013-02-13T12:22:31.440