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A window on the desktop

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Jumbuck | 08:08 Fri 11th Sep 2009 | Computers
3 Answers
This is on XP + SP3.

I currently have a window appearing on the desktop that is requesting that a disk be inserted in the optical drive but there is nothing in the title bar to indicate which program is responsible for this. Also the Task Manager is no use because there is no entry in the Applications tab for that window.

I thought I had at least one program which would identify the owner task of a displayed window but I can't seen to find it. So is there any part of the control panel or any free download software which would provide window management including info about the program / task which is responsible for a window being displayed on the desktop?

Thanks in advance.

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You were halfway there with Task Manager, but you need to view the active Processes rather than Applications. Admittedly many processes are named such that it is difficult to identify which application they belong to therefore I would suggest downloading Process Explorer to aid the identification of this rogue process.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
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I did look at the active processes in Task Manager and there were only the usual 2 or 3 processes which were taking up even 1% of CPU time.

Perhaps you can tell me which columns amongst all those that you can display have any bearing on active windows because none seem to have anything to do with that at all.

But thanks for reminding me about Process Explorer - I have it already and because I seldom use it I'd forgotten about the button which lets you click on a window to see which process is responsible.
A popup window waiting for a user response would utilise approximately 0% CPU load so the process behind it would be one of the other 20 (30, 40?)-odd listed in the Process tab.

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