Rubbing the EmpegBBS lamp again...

SWMBO has had a longstanding problem on her work PC, in that apps grab focus too frequently and too easily. "TweakUI" I tells her.

But most mornings, she looks in the TweakUI settings, and the "prevent applications from stealing focus" checkbox is mysteriously unchecked again.

I've temporarily put a bandaid on the problem by making a batch file that fixes up the ForegroundFlashCount and ForegroundLockTimeout entries in the system registry, then made a link to that batch file in her Startup group.

That takes care of it at system startup, but I'm guessing there's some application on her system that's being a smartass and messing with those registry entries for its own amusement. I'll bet she still gets the problem anyway, despite the band-aid. Uncle Google says that she's not the only one with this problem, but there aren't any clear solutions out there that I can find.

Anyone else ever run into this problem and solve it?

Leave Process Monitor running in the background somewhere, filtering to the relevant registry keys, and when they change, go inspect the log to see what did it.

Spybot Search and Destroy will tell you when something is attempting to change your registry. Maybe that would help you nail down who the culprit is?

hmm- just found that Spybot isn't the best tool out there...
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-adware-spyware-scumware-remover.htm

Seconded! You can even set it up to start logging from boot. You will also want to drop filtered events to keep the log from getting overly large.