Strange behavior of the Task Bar in XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hoib
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Hoib

Hi. Have XP Pro SP3, AMD 3200 proc, large disk, 1 gig RAM. Plenty of
horsepower. Applications running and called from the taskbar or systray are
exhibiting some very odd behavior. I'm looking for a reg tweak perhaps....?

Let's say I pull up some pictures in Windows Explorer. I double click on
one, and the Windows Office Picture Manager launches. At the top there's a
button used for calling for a print. This launches the Photo Printing Wizard
(PPW). The cursor is laying on "Next". Fine. If I mouse away and out of
the PPW frame, the frame looses focus and dismisses to the Task Bar. And
that's where things get interesting. If I mouse to PPW up from the Task Bar,
it appears -but - the moment I move off of the Task Bar, the PPW frame
returns to the Task Bar thwarting my effort to continue printing. Through
experimenting, I can right
click on the PPW on the task bar which calls up a small menu (Move / Close),
then, without clicking I'm able to mouse up to the frame and continue the
wizard. Now, if I "Open With" Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, and call PPW
from its Print button at the bottom, PPW works fine.

It's moving the mouse off the running app frame and then the dismissing to
the Task Bar, that's the killer here. Also, I can use Alt-Tab to task switch
to the PPW. But then if I move off the frame, we're back to goofy.
Interestingly, while in Windows Explorer, if I right click on a picture and
invoke Print, the PPW appears but does NOT dismiss to the task bar when I
mouse outside the frame.

Now I was thinking the problem was with the PPW app. But no! I have
another app running over in the systray, that exhibits the same behavior. If
I quickly move the mouse REAL fast from the icon to the open app frame, it
does work. But any slower movement off the notification area, kills the open
window and I have to go back and left click again. Right click on the
systray app, reveals its second "right click" "menu selections. Selecting
something there allows me to go to the open focused app frame and use it.

So although one might think there's something with the default behavior of
PPW that needs to be adjusted, it appears that the behavior is exhibited in
other applications off the taskbar/systray. Anyone here can show me a setting
or reg tweak to eliminate this silliness?

Thanks folks. Happy Thanksgiving, too.

Note: This is NOT cross posted. I've gone to the Windows Printing and Fax
group and left a message there. TU.
 
Hoib said:
So although one might think there's something with the default behavior of
PPW that needs to be adjusted, it appears that the behavior is exhibited in
other applications off the taskbar/systray. Anyone here can show me a setting
or reg tweak to eliminate this silliness?
Click to expand...

I've never tried it, but might this be X-Mouse, which you can
enable/disable using TweakUIXP?

When you enable it, the focus automatically goes to the window where the
mouse pointer is. So, when you move from the taskbar to an application
window, and you spend too long over the desktop, it gives the desktop
the focus?
 
Hoib said:
Swifty!

You were "dead on" on this one!!! Outstanding! Nice job!!
Click to expand...

Aha! Excellent. A bright spot in an otherwise very dull day. I've used
up my one lucky guess, so won't bother buying a lottery ticket.
 
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