Hi Printman2000,

I will be glad to help you. Request you to try following below steps which might help:

(1)   Click on start

(2)   Type programs and features in the search box.

(3)   In the programs and features screen, detect Quickset application and video drivers. Then uninstall it completely.

(4)   Then you may use the below links to update BIOS, install Quickset and video drivers:

http://dell.to/15acp9p  BIOS

http://dell.to/13m2ICZ   Quickset

http://dell.to/176C1pl  Input tag and detect video drivers corresponding to the video card you have.

If you have any other questions do reply to the same thread.

That did not fix the problem. Any other ideas?

Hi Printman2000,

Request you to answer the below questions:

(1) What exactly do you mean when you say "Quickset is stealing focus"?

(2) Does the screen get dim or freeze?

(3) Have you connected any external monitor to the computer for either extended display or dual display?

If yes, please remove it and check if same thing happens.

If no, you may try connecting an external monitor and check if this repeats.

(4) Request you to try pressing windows + p key and select the desired option. You may refer the below picture:

Also provide more information about the issue. Do reply with your answers.

1. Control from the window I have selected goes away. If you are typing in Word and it loses focus, you can no longer type. The easiest way to tell otherwise is the red X to close a window is not red anymore.

2. No dimming or freezing. I get the same effect as when you merely click on the taskbar.

3. I do not normally have an external monitor connected, but the problem persists either way.

My only solution so far is killing quickset.exe in task manager.

Hi Printman2000,

Request you to make the below observations:

(1) Does it happen only on Microsoft word or on all other applications?

(2) You may try connecting an external monitor and check once if it happens.

(3) Then you may go to windows task manager, select processes, then detect Quickset.exe and check the CPU usage.

(4) You may then use the below link for optimizing the computer:

http://dell.to/YVx5KM

Do reply with your answers.

1. Happens with any and all applications

2. It happens with or without an external monitor attached

3. The CPU usage is never unusually high.

4. "Optimizing" Windows 7 was of no help.

Hi Printman2000,

Request you to use the below link and perform a clean boot:

http://dell.to/18BQkTr  

Make sure Quickset is not disabled.

Now check if the issue gets fixed. If still no go you may use the below link and perform a clean reinstall of windows:

http://dell.to/10tLWQl  

Note: Please backup the data before attempting clean reinstall.

Do reply with your answers.

With the clean boot and Quickset still enabled, problem still happened. Quickset is the lone culprit.

Disappointed that it looks like my only option is to reinstall Windows. That is not an option right now as I do not have the time to restore all my programs and return the laptop to how I need it.

If there are no other suggestions for fixing this, I will continue to disable Quickset.

Hi Printman2000,

Unfortunately we have tried to do most of the options but nothing worked. Now the final option is to perform an operating system reinstall. As of now you can disable quickset and whenever possible please perform an installation.

Note: Please backup data before attempting this.

Hello,

I'm a Dell user XPS 15Z running Windows 7. I'm a software engineer and I spent about 2 hours today figuring out what's the extremely annoying program that steals focus when I work with my laptop. This has been bugging me for over a year now. Lo and behold, it's QuickSet.

What I mean by stealing focus is that the application sends a WM_ACTIVATEAPP or WM_SETFOCUS which removes focus from the existing application and moves it to the QuickSet process. The unfortunate thing is that given that QuickSet does not have a visible window, the user perceives this as the focus being lost. This is extremely annoying for the end user and makes me age every time it happens. Imagine you are typing a message somewhere and all of a sudden the keys no longer do anything because the focus is removed from the input box.

I've used Spy++ to monitor which process steals focus and that's how I arrived at this. If your engineers do the same, they'll notice that seemingly intermittently a WM_SETFOCUS message is sent from the QuickSet process to the OS.

Reinstalling the machine won't solve the issue, please don't ask people to do things that don't matter. Having someone yank their entire machine is a time consuming process for your customers.

Please report this as a defect to the QuickSet guys. I'd be happy to provide them with more details if need be.

Thanks,

-Ameen