Starting new program opens program window in background

Marked solved :)

Night Hawk said:

If some program however is set to be on top that would tend to see any new explorer hidden from view.

Windows user interface does not have such feature as "set program to be on top". It never had. I have no idea know what you were talking about in your previous messages ("With most programs you will find the option to "keep on top of other windows" you check off"???) or in this one ("set program to be on top"???).

The ability to make some window to always stay on top exists at the Windows API level, but it is not in any way accessible through standard Windows user interface and is not casually available to the user. Some specific Windows applications might decide to provide user access to this feature (like Windows Task Manager, for one example), but this is just a peculiarity of those specific applications. Such applications are rare, so your older "With most programs..." is out of question.

I was having an issue in Windows 10 wherein the new windows (e.g., printing from email) would disappear behind all other windows. This is what fixed it for me:

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Select Ease of Access Center
3. Click 'Make the Mouse Easier to Use'
4. Uncheck "Activate a window by hovering over it with a mouse."

I hope this will help others with similar issues. :)

toc said:

@NightHawk

thanks for reply. I have already found a solution - clear install of Windows 10 and everything is OK now :)

That did NOT solve my problem and it is happening on both the windows 10 computers.

I open up a few windows (I like to multi-task) but eventually, I open up a window and it is behind all the others and it will not come to the front. I have to minimize the windows in front to work with it.

Closing and opening it makes no difference. And it does not seem to matter WHAT program opens the window, after about 2 to 3 hours, whatever window is opened gets stuck in the rear.

I have the free Windows 10 upgrade and upgraded from Windows 8.1. I went through the trouble of formatting the HD and re-installing windows 10 (Took a call to Microsoft to get it re-installed) but that did not fix the problem.

After Windows 10 is up and running for an extended period of time, this problem resurfaces.

Microsoft has yet to answer my request on how to fix this problem. Request submitted back in June of 2016.

Lance

I have exactly the same problem, after the Win 10 upgrade. The window selected from the taskbar stays in the background, and the currently active one stays on top, till it is removed by pressing the "-" or "x" on the top left hand corner.

By reading thread, I got the impression that TOC who posted the question first, uninstalled Win 10, to solve the problem. More an act of frustration! I tried the solution suggested by IzzyB68, and that solved the problem temporarily. It was back within a few hours and I see the the "hover select", is still unchecked. It does not appear to be an unfixable issue, but there are may not be so many who are affected and could have to do with another program interfering with the settings. Appreciate if anyone can help.

sunilsiv said:

I have exactly the same problem, after the Win 10 upgrade. The window selected from the taskbar stays in the background, and the currently active one stays on top, till it is removed by pressing the "-" or "x" on the top left hand corner.

By reading thread, I got the impression that TOC who posted the question first, uninstalled Win 10, to solve the problem. More an act of frustration! I tried the solution suggested by IzzyB68, and that solved the problem temporarily. It was back within a few hours and I see the the "hover select", is still unchecked. It does not appear to be an unfixable issue, but there are may not be so many who are affected and could have to do with another program interfering with the settings. Appreciate if anyone can help.

No, I didn`t uninstall Win 10 - I made a clean install of Win 10.
And I have no problems after reinstalling.

So this is my advice - make a clean install, I am sure it will work for you too :)

Thanks. It may not be so easy for me to do clean install, as for me migration of the applications in a laptop to a new one, is effort that takes several weeks. I suspect there may be an easier way to change the settings to fix the problem.

The following solved it for me, after two years of intermittent googling hoping someone had found a solution. It wasn't rocket science in the end. I went into Google Chrome settings, scrolled down to advanced and right at the bottom I clicked reset - reset all setting to original. Bingo, all works as you'd expect now. I'm not a super nerd techie but my guess is some google process or setting causes the behaviour, it keeps chrome in the foreground, and this in turn influences the behaviour of all other programmes to do with foreground and background activity, whether Chome is open or not.

toc said:

Hello,
I have this problem - when I start any program its window appears in background - behind others. Even it is the first program I start its windows is not active and I need to click it to make active.
That issue appeared when I was with Windows 8.1 and after upgrade to Windows 10 remains.

What I have tried - changing the register value of ForegroundLockTimeout to 0 but it didn`t work.

Please if anybody can help with this problem...