Windows XP Apps Losing Focus

Within the last week my Windows XP workstation has begun randomly losing focus from the active window. I've seen this in multiple applications including FireFox, Notepad, Putty, Visual Studio etc. There is no application stealing the focus, instead the active window simply goes inactive and there is no active window visible. In the taskbar the application I am working in is still highlighted - so that application is active but its window does not have the focus.

This is not focus-stealing feature you are thinking of that you can configure with Tweak UI. I checked that and its not enabled and anyway that is working the way its supposed to and looks different since its configured to make the grabbing application flash in the task bar.

This looks more like some other app runs, grabs the focus and then exits. The desktop is in the same state you have when you exit the active application.

Any ideas?

I should have mentioned this was a corporate workstation. It turns out the culprit is a windows script that's trying to run. These may be logon scripts but some of them will run forever if I let them. I found that killing them - instances of wscript.exe - when I have this problem will resolve it without ill-affect that I can see.

I may have to coin a new term: failware.

Jeremy, have you run full scans on your computer using your antivirus software? If so, run a scan using Malwarebytes AntiMalware (MBAM) just to make sure the background application is not bad.

If you find no evidence of a malware infection, using a tool such as ProcExp (an advanced task manager) to view more advanced details of what processes are running on your computer when the focus is stolen. By looking at the processes that appear to be running "hot" (high cpu at that moment) when the focus is stolen, you may be able to pin down a probable cause. Doing research on the offending exectable should give you a fair indication whether or not you really want it running in the background or at all.