I have been dealing with an annoying issue in Windows 7 for the last couple of years now.
About every 30 minutes or so, the current window will lose focus for no reason that I have not been able to figure out as of yet.
This is the same installation that began about 3 motherboards ago, most likely all the old drivers are still in there somewhere.
I think I will get my user folder backed up, back up the BOINC folder and do a complete format and reinstall of the system.
Yeah that's a strange one :) lingering parts of old drivers can do strange things, I hope the last resort re-install clears that up.
Jason
And away we go, luckily I can just turn around and use the i3.
Almost screwed up and forgot to copy the BOINC folder over to my external drive.
When you completely wipe a drive ... it's good to use Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke to completely refresh the lowlevel format with at least zeroes....
Quote from: Jason G on June 17, 2012, 02:19:11 AM
When you completely wipe a drive ... it's good to use Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke to completely refresh the lowlevel format with at least zeroes....
I will try just formatting this time, hopefully it will take care of the problem without having to go full WW III.
I am mostly back up, still have to install some other programs.
Best thing is Thunderbird picked up my old profile folder and I did not have to reload all those settings.
Still doing it after reinstalling the system.
Quote from: arkayn on June 17, 2012, 11:16:40 AM
Still doing it after reinstalling the system.
Balls, time to think about some diagnostics then. If it were me I'd start by Blackvypering all the unneeded services etc to the bone, checking with process exporer, DPC latency checker (to put every single driver in the clear quality wise), trying a different mouse/USB, and trying with every background program you are running disabled etc.
Any chance the multimedia buttons in your keyboard are sticky? Do you lose focus after you unplug that ?
Are some of the HID devices, such as keyboard+mouse set to be allowed to go to sleep in device manager?
I'll try think of more possibilities.
There is some weird nagging in the back of my mind that says to check every single RAM setting when weird things like this happen. Seems illogical, but then so is the problem.
[Edit:] Are you using Wifi ? and if so, what chip is that ?
Jason
Quote from: Jason G on June 17, 2012, 03:18:42 PM
Quote from: arkayn on June 17, 2012, 11:16:40 AM
Still doing it after reinstalling the system.
Balls, time to think about some diagnostics then. If it were me I'd start by Blackvypering all the unneeded services etc to the bone, checking with process exporer, DPC latency checker (to put every single driver in the clear quality wise), trying a different mouse/USB, and trying with every background program you are running disabled etc.
Any chance the multimedia buttons in your keyboard are sticky? Do you lose focus after you unplug that ?
Are some of the HID devices, such as keyboard+mouse set to be allowed to go to sleep in device manager?
I'll try think of more possibilities.
There is some weird nagging in the back of my mind that says to check every single RAM setting when weird things like this happen. Seems illogical, but then so is the problem.
Jason
I doubt RAM as it was doing it on my original AMD board with DDR2-800.
I have tried changing keyboards and it was doing it before installing the full driver for the trackball.
Startup programs are Steam, BOINC, Security Essentials and BOINCTasks.
No WI-FI on this system, it has gigabyte ethernet.
hmmm, Steam & securityEssentials... Just for test I'd disable those too.
Something's familiar about this, but I can't place it yet... If you figure it out first, then I'd love to know what it is :)
[Edit:] does it in safe mode ? does it in msconfig 'clean boot' conditions ?
I left Steam disabled last night with FF in focus. FF was still in focus this morning.
Now the only problem with that, is sometimes it will do it for a few days, stop for a couple of days and then start back up again.
It can also take several hours for it to start as well.
Security Essentials is a little harder to stop as it pretty much has to be uninstalled to be turned off. M$ product.
lol. I hate both those products.
I like Steam for one reason, sales of games.
I could probably uninstall MSE, but I do like to have some AV running in the background and MSE is fairly unobtrusive.
I know, steam is a necessary evil. and I too run AV, even though I use relatively safe practices & am behind a NAT router. With isolation & diagnostics though, everything you can eliminate from suspicion (by removing it temporarily) eventually you end up with nothing left but the real issue... so the answer to this mystery is hiding in what's left ;)
Now if it was only consistent in when it happens, but that makes it a tougher nut to crack.
Quote from: arkayn on June 18, 2012, 01:33:18 AM
Now if it was only consistent in when it happens, but that makes it a tougher nut to crack.
If real problems were consistent, then they wouldn't be problems.
Quality ~= Consistency ( not quality ~= looks good, and not quality ~= performs fast)
So you can suspect there is a quality problem, if there is a problem that is inconsistent (intermittent). If there is a problem that is consistent, then it can indicate high quality (so easily rectified/controlled). It doesn't mean that inconsistent problems are always due to poor quality somewhere, but is pretty clear that it isn;t due to quality being high ;)
I am almost wondering if it might be BOINCTasks doing it on my system. I have not had it running for most of the day and have only lost focus when I had it up in the background.
Of course I am also in the middle of the install all the updates that are required as well.
hmm, well I do use BoincTasks myself, from startup, & don't see that. I see the traybar popup does take focus though. Perhaps you have that set differently than on mine. The version I'm using is 0.93
On BoincTasks Settings->Gadgets:
Mode - "Show All Running Tasks"
Show only over icon after 2 seconds, for 5 seconds
Refresh every 30 seconds
Quote from: arkayn on June 18, 2012, 02:37:22 PMOf course I am also in the middle of the install all the updates that are required as well.
There will be issues with some updates if Boinc is running before the framework updates churn through properly... coregen/ngen tasks need to be left running to completion without competition on the machine.
I always shut down BOINC before I let it start installing updates.
I am running 1.32 of BOINCTasks on my system.
Plus it is time to reset my dcf on this machine as well, it is out of tasks finally.
Next up on the update roulette is SP1.
I just disabled notice checking in BOINCTasks, it had a default setting of every 30 minutes.
All fixed ?
I have not kept BOINCTasks running for a quite a while and I don't see the focus going away during my games anymore.