Aero Peak, WMC & Window focus

[jachin99]

Something that has annoyed the crap out of me from day one, and a problem that I have seen others have is that when they start WMC, it loses keyboard focus, and the remote buttons do not work. Today I finally figured out what was causing it, and fixed it. With aero peak enabled under the taskbar options, and at WMC startup the WMC window loses focus, and clicking on the background of WMC brings it back to focus, which is a huge problem if you use a remote and don't have a mouse. The fix for this problem is to simply disable aero peak in WMC.

[Space]

I've never had this problem with Aero Peek enabled.

Also, if the WMC window does not have focus for some reason, all I have to do is press the green button on the remote and it steals focus back again, a second press brings you to the home/menu screen of WMC (if not already there), and a third press maximizes the window (if not already maximized).

[jachin99]

I've always had to press Ok to get focus back but my family would always wonder why the remote suddenly stops working

[jachin99]

I was wrong. Changing the taskbar settings will avoid losing focus the next time you start WMC but after that, it starts losing focus again.

[Space]

Do you have something running in the background that may be taking focus away from WMC? Like I've said, I've never had this problem.

[jachin99]

I might. I have at least one tray icon notification popup, and eventghost. I can try turning a few things off, and see what happens.

[Crash2009]

Something that has annoyed the crap out of me from day one, and a problem that I have seen others have is that when they start WMC, it loses keyboard focus, and the remote buttons do not work. Today I finally figured out what was causing it, and fixed it. With aero peak enabled under the taskbar options, and at WMC startup the WMC window loses focus, and clicking on the background of WMC brings it back to focus, which is a huge problem if you use a remote and don't have a mouse. The fix for this problem is to simply disable aero peak in WMC.

Disable Aero Peek so you don't need a mouse to retain control of your WMC window is good to know. Obviously you are watching WMC in "windowed" mode...

I just noticed something while trying to duplicate your complaint....When I mouse over OnScreenKeyboard and then Aero Peek OnScreenKeyboard, I loose the display of WMC completely.

Here is a before and after...

A European software named ActualMultipleMonitors might help. I used it with Multiple RDP Sessions, WMC full screen in RDP, and recently someone else tested full screen in a VM client.

[jachin99]

For the time being, disabling my notifications seems like it has stopped the problem but its funny how changing task bar settings effects this. I guess it kind of shows how any little change can throw your PC out of whack in some way or another

[jachin99]

The problem still persisted but its getting better with each little change. I'm convinced notifications are stealing focus away from WMC, and I had a lot of notification icons from programs I removed from the computer in a cache somewhere. I found a batch script that clears your notifications and ran that which gave me some improvements. I also uninstalled a few media center programs that I didn't really use too often, and at least one of them had a notification service inside of WMC. I also went through and deleted registry keys for old WMC programs where the uninstaller didn't remove those keys. I still have WMC lose focus about 2 or 3 out of every 10 startups so my next guess would be I need to troubleshoot whatever programs have notification services inside WMC itself. There are about 3 or 4 windows programs that I need to have running that have notification services so I guess I can look into trying to disable that as well. My question is does anyone know of a way to see exactly what programs hook into the windows media center notification service so that I can see if those internal programs are somehow messing up my remote/keyboard focus? thanks

[Space]

Maybe this tool will help you ID the culprit?

http://www.happydroid.com/focus

[jachin99]

Space, that looked like a great tool so I fired it up to see what was happening. I started WMC what must have been 20 times, and my problem only happened once. In the console window it still only showed WMC. This program only shows window focus but could a certain window be in focus while another program steals keyboard focus? Maybe I should just run this at startup, and keep it minimized.

[Space]

I'm not sure.

There is also an "Always on top" option in the settings of WMC. Not sure if this will help your problem.

[jachin99]

I have tried that but once you restart the PC or close WMC, you have to go back and enable it again. I wonder if there is a command line switch that starts WMC in media only mode though

[jachin99]

With a little bit of skepticism I might have solved this issue. Before explaining my potential solution, I should mention that I notice this problem on Windows 7 Pro machines in particular. I don't recall having the issue so much or at all on Win 7 ultimate machines. With that out of the way, to fix the issue I started WMC, and put it in window mode. From there I started task manager, and clicked the processes tab. I right clicked ehshell.exe and set the process priority to high. This solution survived a few reboots so hopefully it works out.