Keyboards and Keyboard/Mice Combo Sets

[czlee]

I think this issue is fairly tricky and it's taken me a long time (and many forum and internet searches) to narrow down.

Roughly every 30 seconds, all windows on my computer would lose focus for a few seconds, rendering me unable to do anything for that short period.  It's particularly annoying when I'm typing something (say, an e-mail), and the window accepts no input for the few seconds where it's out of focus.

At first it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Logitech.  But I did some extensive searching and found that it could be related to the Windows registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout.  I checked the value and it was 0x12f890 (1243280), so I tried changing it to the default 0x30d40 (200000), but it would change back after a while and the focus problem would reappear.  Upon further investigation I also found that it only happened when Outlook was starting or shutting down—including when it was invoked by Google Calendar Sync.

I used Process Monitor to monitor that entry, and this is where SetPoint gets involved.  Process Monitor showed that every 30 seconds, SetPoint.exe would set the ForegroundLockTimeout value to 0, and then after about two seconds to 0x12f890.  It then followed that my windows were all losing focus for the period during which ForegroundLockTimeout was set to zero.

It's debatable what the "root" cause is here—I could understand if, for example, SetPoint was designed this way on the assumption that Outlook would start up and shut down reasonably quickly.  The annoyance arises when Google Calendar Sync runs, and encounters the issue (also reported by others in Google forums, but not in combination with this issue) where Sync always needs to ask for the Outlook profile.  It then consequently stalls on asking, and because it keeps Outlook running, SetPoint continues to set ForegroundLockTimeout to zero every thirty seconds.  (This also happens when Sync is actually syncing.)

Noting that this issue arises from the combination of several processes, I recognise that this is obviously not the forum to be seeking a solution to the Google issue.  My question here is: Is it by design that SetPoint.exe changes ForegroundLockTimeout to zero, and then to 0x12f890, every thirty seconds while Outlook is in certain states?  If it is, could there be a SetPoint-based workaround to prevent it from doing that?

I'd be very grateful to anyone who could shed some more light on this or bounce some more ideas around.

An example of a Process Monitor log as referred to above is below.

23:20:26.143    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0
23:20:30.332    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 1243280
23:20:56.157    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0
23:20:58.204    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 1243280
23:24:56.291    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0
23:24:58.792    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 1243280
23:25:26.287    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0
23:25:28.668    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 1243280
23:25:56.322    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0
23:25:58.267    SetPoint.exe    5072    RegSetValue    HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout    SUCCESS    Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 1243280

Technical details:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition (6.1 build 7600)

Logitech product: MX 5500 Revolution

SetPoint versions: Control Centre version 6.30.41, Driver version 5.30.67

Microsoft Outlook version: Professional 2010 32-bit Edition (14.0.5128.5000)

Google Calendar Sync version 0.9.4.1