Monday 9 July 2012

HP Laptop Issue Restart.exe takes focus

In order to use some software for marking Further Maths scripts I have a Windows 7 HP laptop.
I put AVG free, Open Office and the exam software on. (Scoris & Epen).

When I did an HP upgrade I found my applications were losing focus.

A process called Restart.exe kept trying to go and failing. This took focus away from my current App and was very annoying. The whole thing cycled focus away every few seconds.

Removing the AVG  and retrying the upgrade did not fix the issue.

Eventually I discovered that temporarily setting UAC to zero allowed the HP upgrade to finish and then I could reset UAC back to normal.

Then  I found that stopping the firewall worked. But ...

Update, the issue reoccurred and so the solutions offered above seem to be myths!

The best HP can offer is reinstall the software.

All I can say is "Good Grief!" Call this an OS?

Hope someone finds this useful.

09/07/2012

Update 10th August 2012

I have taken the (IMHO) sensible option of upgrading to Fedora 17 and may stick the Windows 7 in a VM if I need it. I have had no problems since.

2 comments:

  1. You will need to uninstall HP Internet Sharing to stop the restart.exe taking the focus (flicking back between programs as you type).
    After you change the UAC to zero.
    When HP Internet Sharing has been removed put the UAC back to the default.
    Just had the issue on HP notebook Probook 4530 with Windows 7 Pro.
    Cheers
    Out_theBack

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    Replies
    1. I have the same problem on my HP Probook 4530s and do I just uninstall HP Internet Sharing Manager.. whats UAC, is it that I have to do that step?

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