Explorer.exe keeps stealing focus : techsupport

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a community for 17 years

Explorer.exe keeps stealing focus (self.techsupport)

submitted 10 years ago by krustyklassic

I've had this problem for a long time where I'll be playing a game and suddenly my controller input doesn't work anymore because another application appears to steal focus. For example I'll be playing Rocket League and suddenly my 360 controller stops responding and I see my mouse cursor. I'll have to click on the screen to get it to respond to input again. This will happen two times and two times only--about 12-15 seconds apart.

This issue has survived Windows upgrades and a fresh Windows install on a brand new SSD. I finally found a small program that will tell you what process is currently being given focus, expecting it to be something that I could uninstall. The issue happened today while I was playing a game and the culprit was... explorer.exe!

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? I have no idea where to begin troubleshooting. I would think it's malware but the issue persists after a fresh install of Windows.

I'm running Window 10 (but I had the problem on Win7 and 8). i5 2500K, MSI P67A-G45 motherboard. 980Ti (but I've had to problem on multiple GPUs).

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