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0Patch pop-up steals focus in Win7 Pro

s_n_h

I was just about to recommend buying 0Patch to my spouse when she was about to tell me she was ready to uninstall it!

Problem: I have a Win7 Home Premium machine, everything's fine, she has a Win7 Pro one. We have both the same notification settings, i.e. Only tell me about important things. (Sorry, am on my Linux machine now and don't know the EXACT wording.)

Whereas I have no problem with 0Patch -- the little pop-up just shows up for a second or so, not interrupting anything -- on my wife's machine, it doesn't stay that much longer, but it steals focus and doesn't give it back once it pops down again. She has games crashing because of it and has typed text in vain without result before noticing that no text appeared where she thought it would.

Is this a known bug? Is there anything in the Win7 Pro settings I could change? Please save our marital bliss. :)

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Comments

15 comments

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Mitja Kolsek

    Hi everyone, I'm not sure why we got no notifications about your posts to this thread but now that someone kindly told us about them I'd like to respond.

    We're aware that popups in the FREE plan are annoying and we are fixing that in the next agent version (you'll only get a summary popup every three days if you're missing any patches). Until that, all you can do, while staying on FREE, is to kill 0patchTray.exe process, which is the one actually showing all popups (and the icon, which will therefore disappear). This will, however, also prevent you from learning that a new agent version is available. 0patchTray.exe will get re-launched when you login to Windows next time. We recommend you subscribe to 0patch newsletter (https://0patch.com, bottom of the page) to be notified of the new agent if you decide to disable 0patchTray.exe.

    A bit of background: these "patch available" popups were meant to inform the user about a missing patch but when we had fewer patches they were only shown rarely. Now that the number of patches is growing, they get more frequently applied and to more processes than before, so things get out of hand. Our next agent is under internal testing now and should be out in a few weeks.

    About popups stealing the focus: we've had occasional reports about this problem throughout the years; while we were initially able to reproduce it and modified our code to fix that, now we can't reproduce it anymore although obviously many of you are still experiencing this annoyance. It's also likely that many users didn't even notice the problem until popups became more frequent. We'll appreciate everyone affected and willing to invest some time in investigating this to contact us at support@0patch.com so we can try to find a common thread to your computers that differentiates them from those unaffected (possibly some Windows setting, or some common software product installed). Please include a screenshot of your Windows desktop when the focus-stealing issue occurs, and an export of System Information (launch System Information via Start button, then File->Export). Thanks!

    Sorry for the inconvenience :(

    Thanks,
    Mitja Kolsek

    0patch co-founder

  • mike

    Nearly the same problem here. For example, I am writing - if a pop up shows up it iterrupt and I have to click back to the application. And the notification setting is totally rubbish. Don't inform me doesn't work at all.
    I would maybe buy OPatch but not with this pop up madness.

    And if it should only be the case with the free version, then it is an impudence and I do not buy it on principle.

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  • s_n_h

    Mike, try this: completely uninstall 0Patch, then make sure you install it again WITH admin rights. This seemed to have fixed it on my machine -- I just hadn't had time to come here to share.

    Fact is, though, if 0Patch needs admin rights to install fixes, even if only some of them need it, then no-one should be able to install 0Patch WITHOUT admin rights, there should be a safeguard during installation. Not a difficult thing to program.

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  • mike

    Thanx, but I got it. Ive asked the support.

    Just open the task manager and end this process: 0patchTray.exe 

    You no longer get any pop-ups.

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  • losmemo86
    Edited

    I have the same issue.

    "Available patches" popups keep flashing in the lower right of the screen, stealing focus, slowing down my machine, giving me frustrating problems in writing.

    Killing OpatchTray.exe process seem to cause the program to completely shut down.

    What can i do?

    It's so frustrating

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  • mike

    > Killing OpatchTray.exe process seem to cause the program to completely shut down. <

     

    No.
    My way: If I work with my Laptop, I stop the process before. And after Ive finished my work, I let it run for a while.

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  • losmemo86
    Edited

    mike Good!

     

    New info: i did something(i'm trying to remember what), and the icon in the lower right has disappeared. No more annoying popups flashing for the moment.

    However, in the task manager i still see "Opatch Service".

    Does it mean that Opatch is still running in background?

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  • s_n_h

    losmemo86

    Yes, whatever appears in your task manager is actively running. You can check this by right-clicking on it and see what it says.

    Do you recall what you did to make the icon disappear?

    Also, for anyone running into problems with 0Patch stealing focus: I seriously recommend doing what I wrote above, the install with admin privileges. It should take care of the problem.

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  • 0patch
    Edited

    (^^^^ I am NOT part of the 0Patch team!)

     

    I'm here to say that I've have been having the exact same problem - loss of focus due to 0patch - for the last 2 days.

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  • 0patch

    Crap! I just noticed it gave me a user name of "0patch".

    I am in NO WAY shape or form part of the 0Patch team!

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  • mike

    > Killing OpatchTray.exe process

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  • 0patch
    Edited

    ^^^ Did it - Thanks Mike!

    Just wanted to post that I was having the same issue because I didn't want the rest of you to feel so all alone.... ;-)

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  • mike

    LOL :)

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  • killjoy

    Rather than manually stopping the 0patchTray.exe process each time you login, just change the file's compatibility properties to run as admin which will prevent it from starting at login.  Mine is here [install dir]\0patch\agent\0patchTray.exe.  I'm using free version on Win7.

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  • 0patch

    I just want to mention that I to am having this issue (along with focus stealing popups every time a process is started!!). There really needs to be a "pop-ups setting" of "Only notify me weekly about new patches".

    I am currently on the free subscription and I very much want to pay for the pro plan, but I will not be doing so until this issue is fixed as it makes the software completely unusable.

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