Adobe reader windows keep focus when closing one of multiple windows
2014-04
MrBrody
It's been a recurring annoyance for as long as I can remember:
suppose you have a few pdf documents open in Adobe Reader, latest version (11.0.06), on windows 7 64 bit. For some reason, you want some of them to remain open, as they are part of some work you have not finished yet.
Now, you are opening several other pdf documents, one after the other, in a row, from windows explorer, by double-clicking on their file icons. You want to open one, quickly check what is in it, close it, then open the next one, check it, close it, etc.
Unfortunately, your computer will introduce a tiny delay in that process: when you close one of these pdf files, and expect to have your explorer window to become the active window once again, as it was just seconds ago, it won't: adobe will bring to focus the old pdf files that have been open and inactive for hours, and you have to put the explorer windows back into focus manually, by alt-tab or clicking. This is so annoying, when you have several files to check!
I know this problem is a bit difficult to explain, so I will do a shorter version:
- you have pdf file A that remained open for the last 30 minutes, that is open at the present moment, and that will always remain open in that example, in full screen, in background.
- you open windows explorer, go to a folder with 4 pdf files (B,C,D,E), and click on one (B). It opens.
- you quickly check what is in file B (it may be one word, or one amount, that you are looking for), and you close it, to go back to the explorer and open file C.
- Problem is, when you close file B, file A comes to focus, and as it was full screen, you don't see the explorer anymore, so you have to fetch it again manually.
Now, the question is: How can I disable that feature?
For example, Word 2007 does not have that weird behavior: if you have one file (A) open in the background, and open another file (B) from the explorer, when you close file B, the explorer is back into focus. I think Adobe Reader is one of the few that have this annoying feature.
Thank you very much for your help!
user12932
Recently all of my applications keep losing focus every minute (or so) for a few seconds (then the window gets the focus back). It is very annoying, since I'm typing most of the time and get interrupted by this behavior. Things worked fine until a week ago and I have no idea what is causing this error, but I noticed the mouse moves to a certain point on one of my screens when this happens.
I would appreciate any advice: it starts to drive me crazy...
Majenko
This sounds like there may be something nasty on your machine.
Check your machine for malware with something like MalwareBytes to see if you have picked up a little bug.
Stephen
I had a similar problem. The Event Log had hundreds of errors in the past hour. I just killed the parent of the faulting dll. I'll probably need to re-install the program for a good copy of the dll if it comes back.
Log Name: Application Source: Application Error Date: 12/1/2013 9:03:17 AM Event ID: 1000 Task Category: (100) Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: TV Description: Faulting application name: CLMSServerPDVD13.exe, version: 2.2.0.11406, time stamp: 0x51b0297b Faulting module name: MSVCP71.dll, version: 7.10.3077.0, time stamp: 0x3e77eebb Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x0002d90d Faulting process id: 0x77b8 Faulting application start time: 0x01ceeeaed9275034 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\PowerDVD13\Kernel\DMS\CLMSServerPDVD13.exe Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\PowerDVD13\Kernel\DMS\MSVCP71.dll Report Id: 16ef8974-5aa2-11e3-80ff-90e6bad417a7