Hello people, new to your forum here. Well, I certainly hope you can help me as this problem has been driving me batty.

It's really sort of hard to explain, but here goes.

Say I have several programs open...IE, AOL, Yim, all on my taskbar. I have AOL in the foreground, the rest are minimized. Well, not technically minmized, but on XP you just click whatever program you want open on the taskbar, putting the others in the background.

So I am on AOL, chatting away, and I go to answer a PM on Yahoo!. Well, when I go to bring up the Yahoo! PM, it also brings IE back up as well. So it's like all my windows are somehow connected. This has never happened before, and it's really quite annoying. I ran a VS, a spyware check, I even did a system restore, and nothing has fixed it.

I hope I explained this well enough. Thanks

Hi wired!
Welcome to PC Help Forum!

This is not really a problem I think, cause when you're switching screens all others in fact stay active.
You could try to minimize all programs using Windows button + M, or Windows button + D, and check if your problem comes back then.

Bluefish

No, trust me, it's a problem. Here is another example. I'll open IE, then go back to AOL by clicking it on the taskbar. If I either click the start button, or the icon to show hidden tasks in the systray, it brings whatever else was open up. Be it IE, Windows Explorer, whatever.

That has -never- happened before. Somewhere, somehow, something got changed.

Strange one this.

Can we see if it is a Windows problem or a profile problem. Create a new user - call it what you like - log in as that user and test the minimize maximize thing then....does it happen?

I already have another Windows profile, and yeah, it does it there too. =\

Nothing more?! I even did a system restore to like, over a month ago, and it is STILL happening!

If no one here can help, does anyone know where else I might seek help?

Thanks.

Did you try changing the Windows theme to Classic to see if the problem persists? I can't think that this will fix the issue but it is another thing to try with such a wierd prob. Also, and don't ask me why...maybe a system file is missing or corrupt. Try > Start > run > type in sfc /scannow and put your XP cd into the drive before hitting enter.