Big Box losing focus within 7 seconds of booting/launching/starting.

[playab0yyy]

See attached video and pictures. PC boots straight into Big Box. If I'm standing in front of it while it boots, I'll typically tap a button to skip the intro video. Anytime I do this upon initial boot, Big Box loses focus within about 7 seconds of it starting up. Had this problem come up once before and at that time, under the Focus Assist settings in Windows, I deselected "Show me a summary of what I missed..." and that seemed to have solved the problem at that time. Couple months later and the problem is back now. The only things I did recently were install Visual Pinball as an emulator (along with some games, and everything there is working great) and some recent Windows updates. I can't confirm any of those are what led to the problem, but those are the only recent changes. Very minimal startup apps and focus assist completely off. Nothing else showing when I alt-tab and nothing additional in the taskbar after exiting BB. Again, this only happens upon initial boot. If I boot up, exit Big Box, then restart Big Box (without restarting the PC), the problem does not happen. Note: This is not the issue mentioned in another forum post about losing focus when exiting a game. I tried the ahk file with no luck. Update: I've been uninstalling all the BS little apps that Windows installs (Groove Music, Messaging, Movies & TV, Paint 3d), basically everything I don't need. I also clicked on the apps that it doesn't allow me to uninstall (Edge, Store, Camera, Alarms & Clocks) and went into them and turned off "Background apps", whatever that means. So far the problem is gone. I have no idea what did it, but I guess something in there was doing it. Not really confident in this solution. Really wish I could pinpoint the problem. If anyone has experienced this and is familiar with a specific solution, I'd love to hear it. Thanks for your time.

Edited April 4, 2020 by playab0yyy

[RVS67]

The only working solution I found is to have a startup video for Bigbox, with a min. duration of 7 seconds.

[divetravis]

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this 👍. When booting directly into Bigbox my cabinet would sometimes loose focus and I would have to use a mouse. Adding a startup video that lasts 11 seconds appears to have fixed my problem. Thank You, Thank You, Thank you!!!

[drw4013]

I am having the same issue after BigBox launches.  Is this captured in a bug report somewhere?  The only possible workaround is to add a startup video??

[JEdney]

This is what I did to work out what was stealing focus after BigBox loads at boot-up:

Create a file called activewindow.ps1 with the following code:

Add-Type  @"
 using System;
 using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
 using System.Text;
public class APIFuncs
   {
    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
   public static extern int GetWindowText(IntPtr hwnd,StringBuilder
lpString, int cch);
    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError=true, CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
   public static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();
    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError=true, CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
       public static extern Int32 GetWindowThreadProcessId(IntPtr hWnd,out
Int32 lpdwProcessId);
    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError=true, CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
       public static extern Int32 GetWindowTextLength(IntPtr hWnd);
    }
"@
 
while(1)
{
$w = [apifuncs]::GetForegroundWindow()
$len = [apifuncs]::GetWindowTextLength($w)
$sb = New-Object text.stringbuilder -ArgumentList ($len + 1)
$rtnlen = [apifuncs]::GetWindowText($w,$sb,$sb.Capacity)
write-host "Window Title: $($sb.tostring())"
sleep 1
} 

Then:

• Open LaunchBox.
• Click: Options > General > Startup Applications
• Add application:
  • Application Path: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe 
  • Command-Line Parameters: The path/name of your ps1 file created above.
  • Start With: BigBox
• Reboot

When BigBox loads, wait until it loses focus, then click to give it focus and exit.
You should see a command prompt window with a 1s log of the applications which have focus.
This should help you identify what is stealing the focus.

In my case it was a remote control application called SplashTop. I couldn't stop the behaviour so I reverted to the longer start-up video "solution". You may be more lucky!

I hope that helps.

Credit to: Justin Rich (https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c3cd3982-ffc5-4c17-98fc-a09c555e121c/get-all-child-window-titles?forum=winserverpowershell) for the Powershell.