This has happened on and off for a while but seems a lot more frequent recently.
I’ll be browsing a page, typing a post, generally minding my own business, when I try to scroll down or continue typing and find that the window I am using is no longer active. I have to click on it or alt-tab to get it active again and continue.
Mildly annoying, quickly progressing to irritating. Any ideas on why this happens or what I can do about it? I’m guessing some other programme is trying to take control, but nothing else seems to be happening.
Tech specs:
Averatec PC laptop running Windows XP Home edition. Browser primarily Firefox 1.0.6 (with a handful of add-ons), sometimes IE but I don’t use IE enough to note if this happens there too.
A bunch of things running in Task Manager’s “Processes” section that I don’t recognise, but I’m hesitant to go around closing things arbitrarily. I’d be happy to screenshot the list.
Commonly run background programmes: Yahoo messenger, ePrompter (email retrieval programme), standard Windows networking things that show up as little connection icons.
Suspicion that it might be something to do with detecting wireless networks, because while I was writing “email retrieval programme” a minute ago the screen deactivated three times in rapid succession, and after the second time a popup telling me I had a good network connection appeared.
PS - I’d love to be able to turn off the network notification while still retaining the wireless taskbar icon. There’s a checkbox in networking properties that says “Notify me when this connection has limited to no availability” or something to that effect, and it’s not checked, but I get notices anyway.
Dunno Beth,
I’ve got essentially the same set up here, with a wireless networker…although my main box is hard wired to the cable internet. At any rate, I don’t have the issue show up on mine. Only thing I could think of might be: “Are you in Eurpoe? …Do you need an adapter?” 
My guess is there’s something you don’t know about running in the background (most likely spyware). Have you run spybot or adaware recently? What about the old virus scan?
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I use Ad-Aware regularly (every couple of months, give or take). I’ll run it now and see if it picks anything up.
18 cookies, nothing else detected, and fresh program information downloaded before I began…
Make sure to update AdAware, in case this is something new. Also, try SpyBot, because it can pick up things that AdAware misses. Definately do a virus scan. You should be able to google for the programs on the task manager that you don’t recognize.
Also, I have been using a free-trial program called StartMan</a](http://www.coolutils.com/StartMan">StartMan</a)> that shows you what programs are launched at startup. StartMan can disable any of these processes for all subsequent startups, and enable them again. So it’s a good way to experiment to see if any of these are the culprit.
Don’t be hesitant to close processes on the task manager. The worst that can happen is you’d have to restart (make sure to save your data first, though).
Actually, and I hate to say this, Microsoft’s new anti-spyware program is great. It used to be called Giant Anti-Spyware, which was essentially ad-aware and spybot in one, and Microsoft bought it.
Nothing has been picked up on any scans and there doesn’t seem to be anything suspicious in Task Manager - I’ve downloaded a program called Security Task Manager from a computer site and it explains what each program does.
I have, however, turned off the networking icons this morning so maybe that will reduce the problem. Though it’s annoying not knowing if the network is up or not.
