Alt-Tab task switching is bad in xp

[V S Rawat]

In 98se, I was happily switching between running programs/
windows by pressing alt-tab which opened a window showing all
the running program and then I could switch between them by tab
or shift-tab.

Then, wherever I used to stop, that program used to become the
one in which I work then onwards.

That was very very convenient when I had to cut-paste things
between different windows.

However, in xp, that function has gone bad.
- The opening of that alt-tab window on pressing the keys is
very slow.

- Sometimes it works, but often it doesn't. I keep on pressing
alt-tab, but the curson remains in the window in which I
previously was.

What am I doing wrongly. I can't believer that MS will spoil a
perfectly working thing.

I have selected "activation follows mouse", so the window on
which my mouse cursor is, becomes my active window (though I did
not choose auto-raise).

By any chance, could it be causing problem? Because, it is
possible that it changes the focus to other window, but soon
finds that my mouse cursor is in the other window and takes the
focus back to my previous window. However, the same settings
were there in my 98se and were working well.

How to get that 98se like functionality in xp?

thanks.
--

 

[Anando [MS-MVP]]

I am not sure, but something is not right on your end. Alt-Tab has always worked fine on my 4
machines here, running all flavours of Windows XP. Does this happen even on a clean install of
Windows XP on your machine ?

--

Anando
Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org


Folder customizations
http://newdelhi.sancharnet.in/minku

Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[V S Rawat]

I am not sure, but something is not right on your end. Alt-Tab
has always worked fine on my 4 machines here, running all
flavours of Windows XP. Does this happen even on a clean
install of Windows XP on your machine ?

yes. I have installed xp a total of 5 times by now. and three
out of them were clean installs (formats partition), but the
above problem I faced in every one.

Frankly, I use alt-tab only in winword when I open two or three
word files and copy-paste text from one word file to other. And
I always had that problem, thus I remember correctly and sadly.

I had posted another update about alt-tab in reply to another
thread. I am quoting that here as it is relevant here also.

I downloaded and installed Alt-tab powertoy which gives better
display of contents of windows when I press alt-tab.

However, every program icon is appearing twice in that alt-tab
window. when I am at one of icon, there is no display of the
content, and when I am in the other icon, the content of window
gets displayed.

It is still working, however, it is a waste to skip over the
useless double icons.

How to rectify it?

I had not uninstalled the previous alt-tab switcher and had
installed over and above it. It did give the message that
previous program is there, and had asked me whether to
overwrite. I had given yes.

--

thanks.

 

[Anando [MS-MVP]]

I am guessing that you are referring to the Alt-tab powertoy that can be installed separately. The
built in alt-tab functionality seems to work fine.

If you are referring to the downloadable Alt-tab replacement, then yes, in certain cases when the
machine specs are not of high levels or if too many windows are open, the application has a hard
time displaying the thumbnails.

--

Anando
Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org


Folder customizations
http://newdelhi.sancharnet.in/minku

Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/protect