Sticky windows..

I've tried for about 7 years to change this, thought I'd see if anyone else has this problem/solution. It is hard to explain;

When i use the task bar to bring a window to the top, it sometimes brings another window with it so that the window that was on top is now knocked down to third level; this is especially annoying when I'm trying to drag things from one window to another, i sometimes have to click the two windows i want on 1st and 2nd place over and over before they settle into 1st and 2nd place. I don't think its dependant on the order of the windows on the task bar.

This is my third installation of XP in about 7 years (all different machines and patch levels); This has been a problem in ALL of them, which is why this question is in customization (i think this is a feature not a bug), anyway I'd love to disable it in some way; Hope someone can help.

Thanks.

 

when you right click on the taskbar are you using cascade windows or tile windows?

for me when I used that feature and if I ended my session without undoing the cascade or tile, that it took a long time to get back to normal, this only happened once and I've always made sure to undo the step each time.

are your windows maximized?

when I have several tabs in the taskbar, I can click on them and whichever I click on will come on top, if it's window is smaller than my maximized page it will be on top to the page that was showing previously, but I can minimize any window to just see one window at a time.

window that was on top is now knocked down to third level;

this line confuses me in that it seems that you have your windows tiled horizontally, is this correct??

 

cascade windows or tile windows - both disabled.

windows maximized - no, but this does still happen when the original window is.

windows tiled horizontally, is this correct? - My windows are sized to my personal preference (by stretching them at the edges)

this line confuses me - Told you it was difficult to explain, i will try again;

Imagine five windows open on your desktop, they are not full screen and are manually sized, so they overlap; They will have an order of which is above or under which on the desktop. We will say these are their 'levels', if a window is on level 1, it is on 'top' level 5 will be under all the other windows.

Right so if i bring the window that was on level 4 into focus (using the task bar making it level 1), you would expect the window that *was* level 1 to now be on level 2; however the level 4 one brought the level 5 window up along with it and so has knocked our old level 1 window into level 3 position... is that any clearer?

 

okay, I tested this, I opened 5 documents , resized them so they would overlap, I then clicked on them randomly and the one I clicked on stayed in the order I had them lined up and just the one I clicked on came into the focus. they stayed this way whether I clicked on the document or whether I clicked on the taskbar.

then I spread them out over the whole screen so I could see each one at the same time and then clicked randomly on the document and from the taskbar and in either method they stayed in the same place.

not sure what is happening with you, are there any errors in event viewer??

please run checkdisk with the /r parameter , run at least twice, if you do not have the recovery console installed then run it from the command prompt

type in chkdsk c: /r spaces between the k and c, also the : and the /

run as many times as necessary until no errors are found, the report can be found in event viewer/ application/ winlogon

if you do this from the recovery console you can see the report without going to event viewer.

post back with results, please

also what media are you using for these fresh installs?? an oem copy of xp or a retail copy??

 

I repeated your test, i can't get it to happen when I'm trying; It seems to need some of the folders to stay in the background for some time, i will experiment further and try to find a way to get this to happen on purpose.

media; both oem and retail, both 32bit and (now) 64bit, with both the latest service pack and unpatched, on both on amd and intel. I can't imagine how this could be an error, but i will run checkdisk later tonight.

 

okay, let me know the results of the checkdisk, please

 

It took most of the night to run (wouldn't run in cmd, couldn't lock the drive, so scheduled next reboot) had a good look through event viewer, couldn't really see much wrong there;

the browser has forced an election on network (8033)
{not common, my network is fairly busy}
network adapter TAP- (4201)
{This is probably my open VPN }
IP address lease ..denied by the DHCP (1002)
{Another system on my network needs a fixed local ip, leads to this.}
time service is no longer synchronized (36)
{Probably my firewall blocking part of the OS}
controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort3.
{This is either a 2tb WD that's dodgy or a hallucinating card-reader}
The IPSec Driver is starting in Bypass mode (4295)
{Not ideal, linked to a crappy update from MS, looks like is locks down once up and running though.}
\DRIVERS\SaiK0CD5.sys failed to load (26)
{My RAT5 software, it works, but buggy.}
default permission settings do not grant Local (10016)
{I know i should allow netman remote access, but I'd just rather not.}
The Java Quick Starter service failed (7000)
{yes, I'd rather it didn't start when i didn't need it, and did start when i did...}

The behavior pre-dates most of these; Nothing else to note; A few errors with Firefox and Trucrypt, but this behavior happens whether they are open or not.

 

is this pc a hewlett packard?

have you tried this with some of your programs uninstalled and just xp?

you could install one extra program at a time , testing each time, until you find if there is a program causing this procedure.

I have not ever received a firefox error in event viewer what is the source and id number of this error. I do not know what trucrypt is but what is the source and id of this error also,

If you open event viewer and double click on the error on the right side of the dialog box is an icon (third one down) looks like an open book, you can click this, which copies to clipboard and then have a reply open here in this forum, right click on reply box and click on paste and the info will be copied to the reply box so I can see it.