File Focus Lost after Restoring Minimized Window

I've noticed that if you follow these steps, the cursor isn't on the file anymore:

1) Open a folder with some files.
2) Click on a file. Pressing the arrow keys should move the file selection around (I call this the cursor).
3) Minimize the window.
4) Restore the window.
5) The cursor isn't on the file anymore. The current selected file has a gray background. Pressing arrow keys have no effect on the file selection.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Hi Wellhole, and welcome to Vista Forums.

This is the way Vista was designed. Since there are multiple panes in a Windows Explorer window, you will have to select (click in) a pane to activate it first. To make it a bit easier to do, you can use the Single Click option instead. This way all you have to do is let the mouse pointer hover over the files to have it selected instead of clicking on it again.

Single Click option

Hope this helps,
Shawn

This is really bad design on Microsoft's part. There are many heavy keyboard users out there and the focus to start on the navigation panels is just plain bad. I can't think of why they would do this when the primary reason for having a folder open is to get to files and not to look through folders.

Thanks for the option Shawn, but I prefer the keyboard when I'm going down 1 file only. Clicking once would also be faster than hovering and waiting.

I agree. I suppose that you could turn off the Navigation Pane to help avoid the problem if you do not use it.

Nope, already tried that. Focus is still on the invisible panel. How do I know? I still have to tab 7 times to get to the file panel.

There goes that idea.

This is why I became a heavy single click mouse user where I can now.