Windows/dialog boxes open behind app

Windows XP with Quickbooks and Chrome

[ergophobe]

Some apps, notably Quickbooks and Chrome, always end up opening dialog boxes and, in the case of Quickbooks, most new windows *behind* the app. So I need to click to perform the action, then click again to bring the new window into focus.

In other words, in Chrome, if I right click for Save as... it appears that nothing happens. If I click again on the app, the dialog box comes to the front.

Similar with Quickbooks.

Both apps have always done this, but it didn't bug me too much with Chrome. With Quickbooks, though, this is really annoying, because it opens new windows all the time.

Any ideas?

[mack]

If you right click on the main app is there an option to "keep in front" if you have this selected it might stop your dialog boxed being able to appear on top.

Mack.

[kaled]

If the problem is more general (not app-specific) you may find a solution here...

[social.answers.microsoft.com...]

Kaled.

[ergophobe]

Mack - I don't see any just thing on Chrome.

Kaled... thanks. My computer has been doing this forever, including through battery changes, so I don't think the full power disconnect is going to solve anything, but I'm going to try right now just in case.

[ergophobe]

Wow! Kaled, that worked!

I realized that I had changed batteries, but not really given the computer time to discharge any capacitors. So I took the battery out, pushed the boot button so it would try to boot and drain any capacitors.

Rebooted and whatever it is was reset. Quickbooks and Chrome work fine.

The odd thing is, unlike the other folks in that thread, for me it was happening 100% of the time with those two apps and 0% of the time with any other apps.

Strange, but this has been driving me nuts for a while with Chrome. When I started using Quickbooks, it became completely intolerable.

I have to make a confession - I actually saw that thread in my searching, but early on they said it was a Win7 64-bit thing and figured it wouldn't work for me (32-bit XP)

[ergophobe]

Spoke too soon. The problem is back. At the moment, my best guess is that it's Skype that's causing it, because it was only after I launched Skype for the first time since the reboot that the problem came back, but who knows.

When I killed the battery and then booted in Safe Mode, it was definitely gone though.

So I guess now it's just a matter of figuring out which app that launches at startup is causing this