Why does the task pictogram flashes instead of opening the program?

windows-7 taskbar focus

13,539

Ah, that video makes it more clear and even your mouse cursor icon seems to have issues, I would suggest:

Try updating video drivers.
Try disabling/enabling the Desktop Window Manager service.
Try disabling/enabling Aero.
Use ShellExView and try to disable non-Microsoft shell extensions, one might be bad behaving.
Try creating a new user account and migrating your stuff there.

As a last resort, I think you might need to reinstall...

13,539

fredley

Incomplete project factory.

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

fredley over 1 year

Sometimes, when I select a click a program on the Windows 7 taskbar it won't appear (it doesn't gain focus and remains behind other open windows), and the icon will flash and turn orange. This happens reasonably frequently, and I've had it happen on two separate Windows installs on different machines. It just happened now and the only programs I have with active windows are Chrome, WMP and Explorer (2). It happened when I clicked Explorer.

Once this has happened to one window, it affects all windows, and the only way I can switch between programs is by finding the window manually or using Windows+Tab. The only way I've come across to get the computer to snap out of this annoying behaviour is to restart the machine. Is there a way of stopping it?
- Geeklab about 13 years
  
  Could you try to close some programs from the tray? They may be interfering with the normal behaviour of the taskbar. I've also read that having certain usb devices connected during startup may cause the problem.
- fredley about 13 years
  
  Which USB devices? I'd be interested to see your source for that information.
- user541686 about 12 years
  
  I think this is a bug in Explorer... it's happened to me too, randomly.
- bwDraco about 12 years
  
  This appears to be focus stealing prevention not working correctly in Windows 7. This isn't exclusive to Explorer but is likely to be a problem with the Desktop Window Manager.
- Ivo Flipse almost 12 years
  
  @fredley did any of the answers solve your problem, else we might as well close it
- ken over 11 years
  
  I had this problem, and it turned out that a systray menu was opened but not closed, and closing it fixed the problem. For me, it was "Apache Monitor" -- I had accidentally opened the context menu and then somehow left it open, and this caused the flashing buttons problem. Once I discovered it was open, I was able to close it and the problem went away.
- thomasa88 about 11 years
  
  Had this problem over remote desktop. Clicking the "Show Desktop" button solved it for me. edit. Killing and restarting explorer.exe did not help.
fredley about 13 years

The mouse cursor icon is just due to the recording software I'm using, normally it's fine. I have the latest drivers, and restarting explorer/dwm doesn't make the problem go away, only a restart fixes it.
Tamara Wijsman about 13 years

And the other suggestions?
fredley about 13 years

It hasn't happened for a while, and I don't know what causes it so can't reproduce the error. When it happens again I'll let you know.