Hello. I gave up on this, and I switched to another virus scanner (paid).
Please note, before I switched:
1. I often lost focus in the window I was typing.
2. Another program that runs in the task tray constantly had taskbar issues and would cause the taskbar to pop-up. (I auto-hide the taskbar.) That was the more annoying than #1.
Now that I have switched to another virus scanner. I have none of the above issues.
The above seems to be the final solution to the problem. The issue has existed with this McAfee product since 2012 according to when people started posting about it. Now it is SIX years later and it still hasn't been fixed. It's very understandable that the average user does not discover this because of the low frequency of focus loss. Still it's terrible that the issue has not been adressed yet. By this time one could wonder if it's really a bug or if it was intended from the start by the company.
It's been an issue for longer than that, here's a post from 2010 of someone reporting it and never getting a response, and here's from 6 days ago another user reporting it.
And I'm also now reporting it as I finally identified that McUICnt.exe is the culprit that has been plaguing me with this issue for years (across multiple machines I've used McAfee on).
If uninstalling McAfee is the issue I'll just start telling everyone that complains about this issue for that to be their first step, and then your millions of installs with no issue will probably quickly drop.
So we're all on the same page here is the results from Window Focus Logger:
Time Process name Off screen Keyboard focus User interface Mainwindow title 15/08/2018 06:45:31 notepad False True True Untitled - Notepad 15/08/2018 06:45:30 McUICnt True True True 15/08/2018 03:45:44 WinStore.App True False True Microsoft Store 15/08/2018 03:45:32 notepad False True True Untitled - Notepad 15/08/2018 03:45:31 McUICnt True True True 15/08/2018 03:41:20 notepad False True True Untitled - Notepad
As you can clearly see McUICnt takes focus for a brief moment every 3 hours then returns it to the previous window (and in this example WinStore.App takes focus at one point but it isn't stealing keyboard focus which seems to the main difference and thus doesn't take pull the user away from the active window.
I am having the same problem as all of you... had to install a process monitor and focus to find out that it was McUICnt.exe that was stealing the focus. I had it happen on the system that I have been using for work to test how McAfee works. Unfortunately for McAfee, this issue just cost them 1,200 licenses as I just recommended to my corporate technical board that we do not switch from KAV to McAfee and that we find a different product.
Stealing focus is annoying, having it happen for an extended period and apparently having their engineering department ignore the issue is a pretty good indication that they would not add value to our company
I too am having this issue on Windows 10. I use the free Window Focus Logger to verify that it is McUICnt stealing focus. My HP Pavilion came pre-installed with McAfee LiveSafe. Just wanted to add to the list of reports. I plan on switching to a different antivirus/firewall/suite.
Currently installed versions:
I switched to Comodo Internet Security. Haven't had focus stealing issues since.
After 11 years of subscription I feel like a fool for not changing to another antivirus provider earlier considering how long this issue has been present. Byebye McAfee, you're welcome to contact me if you ever get down to fixing this issue (if it happens within my lifetime that is).
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