Norton randomly making my window lose focus?

[Qurorororo]

I’ve randomly been losing focus of my current window since last month sometime and it has been driving me crazy, only happens for like a second then goes back to normal.
I ran a program that keeps track of what is taking focus on my PC and when it happens its Norton.
Is anyone else having this problem?

I’m on Windows 11.

[Atticus]

Yes. This started with the most recent update. I also came up with a script to figure out what was happening. I noticed while typing that the cursor loses focus periodically. It happens more frequently the more active I am. And at idle it slows down in frequency. Then while playing Minecraft with my kids I keep getting pulled into the game menu. This happens if I hit Esc or if the window loses focus.

I first checked if my keyboard was sending erroneous keystrokes and it wasn’t. So then I came up with a Nodejs script that queries a Windows API to check which window has focus. See: Pastebin / z2Xjsrrs

And what I see happening is the following:

Focus changed:
Title : Minecraft
PID : 27904
EXE : C:\Windows\System32\ApplicationFrameHost.exe
Time : Mon Dec 23 2024 22:47:41 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)
Focus changed:
Title : Norton 360
PID : 19560
EXE : C:\Program Files\Norton\Suite\NortonUI.exe
Time : Mon Dec 23 2024 22:47:42 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)
Focus changed:
Title : Minecraft
PID : 27904
EXE : C:\Windows\System32\ApplicationFrameHost.exe
Time : Mon Dec 23 2024 22:47:42 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)

NortonUI.exe briefly takes focus before returning it to the original process.

This behavior persists with Auto-Protect disabled.

Seriously annoying and will cause me to rethink my AV if I have to put up with it much longer.

[V_M]

Unfortunately, I didn’t see this tread so I created a new yesterday about the same topic (with screenshots):

Possibly NllToolsSvc.exe causes loosing focus on a window

Note: Please do not post Personally Identifiable Information like email address, personal phone number, physical home address, product key etc. Issue abstract: lsass.exe or nllToolsSvc.exe occasionally force the window of any applications that I am using, to un-focus for around 1 second, thus the program not taking my inputs. Detailed description: Whenever I am using an application in windowed mode, be it a Steam game, a non-Steam game, or even just excel, sometimes in irregular intervals, the…

As a summary, same issue as the OP, I saw that lsass.exe and nllToolsSvc.exe create a spike on my C Drive whenever this happens and the most possible culprit is nllToolsSvc.exe and thus Norton.

I also posted both our threads to the v24.xx issues thread for a bit more visibility, as it seems it makes it easier to pass down issue reports:

Thread for version 24.xx issues and suggestions

I see this is a collection of issues. For visibility, I will post the thread of a fellow user as well as mine here regarding a similar issue, where Norton or nllToolsSvc.exe is causing a window to loose focus: (both threads are also linked with each other for better visibility) @Puzzler You mentioned in previous posts something about rolling back, could you please provide me with some detailed information how this is done? My subscription is ending in 2 days and I am still hesitant/against …

[Atticus]

I was able to resolve this issue by disabling Norton360 at startup. It re-enabled itself after rebooting, and the issue went away. I guess it re-enabling itself fixed whatever was wrong in my case.