Win 7 keeps focusing on task bar

[Question2]

Windows 7 keeps focusing on my taskbar.

Example : I have a game running in windowed mode, and the task bar randomly appears like in the pic.



If i am running a full screen application, it will minimize to focus on the taskbar. If i only have my browser opened, windows focuses on the taskbar.

To give you an idea what it is like, open your browser and click on your taskbar. Windows un-selects your browser and selects your taskbar.

Ive scanned with malware anti-bytes and ESET smart security 5 but found nothing.

[SteveThePirate]

Hi,

If you right click your taskbar and select properties is "auto hide taskbar" selected? If so untick this and press ok. You just want "lock the taskbar" selected.

Hope this Helps

Steve

[Question2]

I only have lock the taskbar selected.

[SteveThePirate]

Hi,

I found these steps on another website, give these a shot;

Switch your theme from aero to basic:
1. Right Click on your desktop and select personalize
2. Scroll down the theme and click on Windows Basic (other themes may also work)

Or reduce the font size:
1. Right Click on your desktop and select personalize
2. Click display in the bottom left of the window
3. Reduce the font size (mine was at 150% so reduced it to 125%)
4. Click apply (it will get you to log off so that the changes can be applied)

Let me know how these go

Steve

[Question2]

Do you mean switch themes and then switch back?

[SteveThePirate]

You could try it, but i think the first step means keep at as basic then do what ever customization you want to it then.

[Question2]

Well i tried it in basic and the problem still occurs...

[SteveThePirate]

Have you tried the font re-sizing steps? If that doesn't work then all i can thin of for you to try is go to Start menu search command prompt and open it up. type sfc /scannow and press return. This scan might take a while bu it will repair any errors that windows has.

[Question2]

My font size is already at 100%, which seems to be the lowest it can go...

sfc /scannow produces no results.

[SteveThePirate]

does it happen only with the one program?

[Question2]

No, taskbar keeps getting focused on even if i only have my browser open.

[SteveThePirate]

Ok so did a bit more research for you and found this post, this is the only thing it has to be,

In my case, this was related to the notification area (f.k.a. System Tray). Specifically, the "Action Center" notifications were causing the taskbar to pop-up every few seconds. I went into the Taskbar properties, and selected 'Customize' within the Notification area. I chose the 'Hide icon and notification' option for the Action Center icon. I'm sure that some of the other icons could cause this issue, as well. You just need to use trial and error to figure out which one is causing the problem. OR, I suppose you could choose to hide all of the icons if you don't care to see any of them in the system tray/notification area.
Steps:
1. Right click the taskbar
2. Select Properties
3. Click the 'Customize' button in the section labeled 'Notification area'
4. Find the suspect program (Action Center, in my case)
5. Click the drop-down next to the icon of the offending program
6. Select the "Hide icon and notifications" option
7. Click 'OK' to close the Notification Customization screen
8. Click 'OK' to close the Taskbar properties menu

If its not the action centre try with any other program on your notification area

Steve

[Question2]

I never see any notifications pop up...

But i just tried setting them all to hide icon and notifications.

Didn't work...

[SteveThePirate]

Lol this is a pernickety problem. Ok so this is the last solution i could find that would do this to your taskbar.

Ok, I think I have figured out the problem. I just watched a 21 minute video without the problem (this was impossible before). It seems that Windows Error Reporter or Problem Reporter was reporting a problem with a single application over 1000 times per 24 hours. Every time the problem reporter reported a problem it must have caused the video players to lose full screen focus and pop up the taskbar for a few seconds. I uninstalled the offending application and now it seems to have stopped. (The program was Orb Video Server -- but I doubt that's important).

Here's how to find out what application is causing the problem:
1. Do a search in the Start Menu searchbar for EVENTVWR and open the exe file.
2. In the middle, there should be a section called "Summary of Administrative Events". Click the + box in front of Errors.
3. There should be a large amount of errors reported in the last 24 hours under Application Errors. Double click the Application Errors name
4. Click on any of the Errors and in the grey description it should give a Faulting application name. That is your culprit application. You can either uninstall that application or I'm sure there is a way to turn the problem reporting off if you feel the application is important or is not actually causing errors.

I don't know for sure if Orb was actually erroring or if Windows just said it was since it still worked fine, but uninstalling it did the trick and the problem reporting has stopped and so has the taskbar problem. Hope this helps.

Give it a go, hopefully it will sort it out. I've never came across anyone with this problem before but i see how annoying it could be.

Steve

[Question2]

Well here are my errors : errors.evtx

I have no clue how to fix them though...

[Question2]

I also noticed some warnings :

Volume Shadow Copy Service warning: VSS was denied access to the root of volume \\?\Volume{8e28feb2-44bf-11e0-97e7-70f3954dc6f2}\. Denying administrators from accessing volume roots can cause many unexpected failures, and will prevent VSS from functioning properly. Check security on the volume, and try the operation again.

Operation:
Removing auto-release shadow copies
Loading provider

Context:
Execution Context: System Provider

and

The speed of processor 7 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 4084 seconds since the last report.z

[Question2]

bump .

[spunk.funk]

Try this: Event ID 12348

[Question2]

What is a volume root directory?

[spunk.funk]

where <VolumeRootPath> is the path to the volume root directory, for example, C:\.