Games keep alt-tabbing.

[baby on ipad]

Whenever I play a fullscreen game, be it ANY game, it alt-tabs. Does anyone know why? Because it seems like whenever something intense in games are going to happen, it suddenly alt tabs, and I need to click its icon in the task bar to get back in the game.

[ReBoot]

In most cases, it is caused by third party software. What AV scanner do you run? Deactivate it.

[Leve Stacy]

idk, I just want that steam mark ♥♥♥♥

[baby on ipad]

I only use MalwareBytes. I had Norton (It was my dads computer, he wanted it) but it ran out. But when I click on that arrow on the bottom right of my screen,it shows 2 Norton things.

Originally posted by ReBoot:

In most cases, it is caused by third party software. What AV scanner do you run? Deactivate it.

[Matador56]

I also have this problem. It happens to me mainly when I am using my Logitech controller. I have not found a solution that works 100% of the time but there is a process running called XboxStat.exe. When I end this process the problem is much less annoying.

[Millsie]

It would be wise to uninstall the norton antivirus as it can be very hefty on your computer. Norton is known for its screen popups which could be interfering with your game in full screen.

[baby on ipad]

I just finished uninstalling. I'll post again what my results are.

Originally posted by Voxis:

It would be wise to uninstall the norton antivirus as it can be very hefty on your computer. Norton is known for its screen popups which could be interfering with your game in full screen.

[baby on ipad]

Voxis, that didn't work. But it made it a bit better.

[Matador56]

Try disabling anything you can think of that is set to check for automatic updates. Possibly Java, windows update or any malware/antivirus software you have installed.

[TheRoux]

Funnily enough... it started to happen to me when I use the steam controller... never happened before and it's the only thing that changed

[timberaath00]

Originally posted by Barilius:

Funnily enough... it started to happen to me when I use the steam controller... never happened before and it's the only thing that changed

Having this same issue, now that I have a Steam controller. Sinlge player action games, this can be quite annoying. I can only imagine online games with multiplayer and having this happen. OH WAIT, IT DID WHEN M CHARACTER DIED IN REALM OF THE MAD GOD AND I WAS MAD AS HELL. Steam, pls fix pls

[76561198258988800]

This isn't a Steam caused problem, so Valve / Steam cannot fix it.

[baby on ipad]

Originally posted by Dr Thomas Pabst:

This isn't a Steam caused problem, so Valve / Steam cannot fix it.

Yeah this was a year ago. In January I got a gaming laptop, and the problems stopped. I guess it's just because I had a really weak graphics card.

[NeoDodge84120]

Okay so this may be extremely specific but I've found the reason I've personally encountered this problem : an unbound cursor that goes out of the screen. You don't see a cursor so you don't know it's happening, but as soon as you click outside your game, Windows switches you to the desktop.
If you have a multiple screen setup, do try activating clone mode just to see if something changes.
Also, if this is your problem, you're basically fracked. It's a game by game problem that will probably never be fixed by the games' developers for lack of an impacted demographic (I mean, if the developers of Skyrim can't be bothered to fix one of the most played games of the past years, what hope do we have for anything remotely obscure ?).

[David]

I had this exact same problem and eventually figured out that it was caused by Synergy. Synergy is an application that allows you to share your keyboard and mouse between multiple machines over TCP. My advice to anyone having this issue is to (1) shut down the Synergy background process if you have it running (2) Check your running processes for anything that might be capturing your peripheral device inputs and shut those down too (I'm thinking any remote desktop clients/servers)