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In Windows 7, is there a way to see/show the "z-order" of all open windows in some kind of centralized table or list form (other than a merely visual/manual correlation of which window is on top of which window)?

The z-ordering of windows is getting randomly and sporadically changed/rearranged, and I don't know what's causing it. I'm trying to find some way or program to show a table or list of all open windows and their current z-ordering, so that I can diagnose "before" and "after" shots to see if there are patterns in the (unprovoked) z-order scrambling.

I'd hoped that there would be some tool from NirSoft or Sysinternals that could do this, as it seems like something that would be in their respective suites, but I've been unable to find anything yet.

Windows obviously stores this z-ordering information somewhere (correlating to a visual ordering/stacking of windows), and so I'm hoping to find something or some way to get at that information.

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  • Not sure what you are actually asking.. I hope you know that you can cycle your windows through Alt + Tab. Or, through Super + Tab for a different visual experience. Is this what you want?
    – Aditya
    Commented Oct 19, 2013 at 17:39
  • What order are you talking about? The order you opened them? The order their arranged in the taskbar? Your question is very unclear. Windows applications can be reordered...
    – user201262
    Commented Oct 19, 2013 at 23:22
  • After some deeper research, I've learned that I'm asking about the "z-order" of windows. I understand I can cycle through them. I'm looking for a way to "tabulate" the z-ordering of windows, in an attempt to diagnose why the z-ordering is randomly sporadically and randomly getting rearranged. Updating question now.
    – Coldblackice
    Commented Oct 20, 2013 at 0:15

1 Answer 1

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This little command-line utility will dump all windows in Z-Order. It's very old but still works here on Windows 11.

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