Solution
Press Win+R, type or paste regedit.exe
in the text box, and press Enter.
Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Locate the ForegroundFlashCount
value, and set it to 1
.
Note In case the value is missing, create a new DWORD
(32-bit) value. While you could set it to 0
, that would prevent modal dialog boxes from properly regaining focus.
Log off and log back on to apply the changes.
Additional information
The ForegroundFlashCount
registry value was first introduced with Windows 2000. Here's an excerpt from the original documentation:
Specifies the number of times the taskbar button flashes to notify the user that the system has activated a background window.
Source: ForegroundFlashCount
In Windows Vista and earlier the value was set to 3
by default. Starting with Windows 7, the default value is 7
. Although it doesn't seem to be specified anywhere, the same value also controls the way modal dialog boxes flash when you try to shift the focus to their parent windows.