Replies

Ben:

I’ve had similar experiences with IE8 recently, on various clients’ PCs (I’m an independent PC consultant). Three areas that are easy to check and often lead to big slowdowns:
– Open Internet Options, choose Connections tab, then click on LAN Settings button; make sure Automatically Detect Settings is cleared
– Second most important (although this may not apply to your specific case as Firefox seems to work OK) is use an alternate DNS source, such as OpenDNS (208.67.222.222). After you manually add this into your TCP/IP settings, confirm that it is going to OpenDNS by opening a command prompt and typing nslookup.
The response to that command should be “Default Server: resolver1.opendns.com” and “Address: 208.67.222.222” as the second line. (they type exit) If you are getting something else, you are likely infected with some malware. Then, proceed to following other posts about scanning with this or that (I like Malwarebytes).
– Lastly, again from Internet Options, choose Advanced tab then click on Reset button. *** Warning*** this will reset all of IE’s settings, clear all passwords, history, etc. and return it to a “just installed” state. However, this has fixed more of the tough issues I’ve encountered with IE than I can remember.

Or… enjoy Firefox!

After using TweakUI to instruct Outlook to stop stealing focus, and turning Automatic Send/Receive back on, my problem has returned. So, there still seems to be some issue within Outlook that causes the focus to switch back to the main window while working in another message window.

I will re-enable Automatic Send/Receive and try what you are suggesting, then will get back to all in a few days.

I just confirmed the problem today: it is Outlook itself! I turned off automatic (periodic) Send/Receive several days ago and the problem has not occurred since. I guess my next question is “Is anyone else out there seeing this symptom as well?” If so, how have you dealt with it?

For now, I am just hitting “Send/Receive” every now and then….

Yes, it is the main window stealing focus. And today, it happened while in Firefox, with Outlook as a secondary (non-minimized) app. Could it be Send/Receive? Outlook is set to auto send/receive every 5 minutes. FYI: no COM addins in any of the three PCs.