Azure VM - RemoteApps Mouse Focus Issue

[Jeff_Heathman]

Seeing an issue this morning on multiple VMs and hostpools where Remoteapps have not handling Window Focus correctly. 

Situation:  A maximized app and a secondary app smaller and on the same screen.  If attempting to click or use the smaller app.  The maximized app is receiving the mouse clicks.  In some situations it will even pull to the front covering the smaller app.  The only way to interact with the smaller window is to minimize or move the larger window out of the way.

Both applications in the scenario are remote apps.  Naturally anything running natively off the client PC is unaffected.  No updates to the client PC.  Trying to identify what would cause this behavior overnight.

[#2]

@Jeff_Heathman - we're seeing the same issue across many AVD installations, all starting on the 16th.  We haven't found the common denominator yet.

We restored an AVD on Friday (from Thursday night) and the problem went away - and was back this morning.  No windows updates or other Windows level updates.  We're leaning towards the AVD stack.

Have you had any luck with this?

[#3]

@Doug Johnson  - We have seen this weird focus issues as well which seems isolated to the RemoteApps. I first notice a few weeks ago after the 'Remote Desktop Services SxS Network Stack' was auto updated to 1.0.22.07.18300. I downgraded to 1.0.2206.28300 and it had been fine for a week.

However it appears the session hosts have been auto updated again this weekend to 1.0.22.08.17178 and the problem is back but it now appears intermittent as not all users are reporting a problem. The first time it happened everyone noticed!

[#4]

@MarcusE2 We see similar weird issues after replacing Windows 10 hosts with Windows 11 hosts. And only when our application is used as RemoteApp.

Did you find any solution to this problem? 

[#5]

@Henrik82 Sorry I did not. It's still happening in our environment. I was hoping a newer version of the SxS network stack would fix the issue but I've just checked and we are now running 1.0.2208.17300 which installed 5 days ago.

Luckily for us its only IT who use RemoteApps at present and we are simply minimising the remoteapp when we aren't using it. Not a fix but it's a work around for us. If we had users affected, then I would have treated this as a higher priority. I think it's time for a Microsoft ticket!

[#6]

We have the same issue with Remote App since last month where our user failed to access other applications, while they maximized their Excel windows in the same AVD session.

But our user reported they occasionally have the same "mouse focus issue" even if they have not maximized any windows in the AVD session.

They are running with the latest version of AVD "Remote Desktop" client 1.2.3577.

[#7]

Our initial issue subsided  a week after I initial posted we ultimately had to create a ticket w/ microsoft since it was impacting performance of our employees.  We eventually got a response that it had something to do with graphics driver related.  The issue went away on it's own with no activity from us, so Microsoft got the credit for fixing it. 

The issue resurfaced again around beginning of November were checking for any agent updates that may have occured.   It started off with a few hosts but slowly spreading to rest.  We've reopened our case with Microsoft on it again.  They've given us a few registry tweaks to attempt but still ongoing at this time.  

[#8]

@MarcusE2 

Please can you explain to me how you downgraded? I had the same issues and i found that by changing the winstation reversedlistener to the older version the problems went away. But now the issue is that only the new version of the SxS driver is  installed on the session hosts. This will result in SxSListernerChecks during boot.

I really want to know how to downgrade and lock the downgraded version. The new focus bug have a very high impact on our customers.

[#9]

Hi, did anyone figure this out?

[#10]

I would like to know too as we are having the issue also

[#11]

Still have a open case with MS on this.

[#12]

We see huge improvement on window focus after SxSStack-1.0.2301.03700 was released in production host pool this week.

[#13]

Did anyone find a resolution to this?
We are still having the same problem. We rebuilt our host pool on version 22H2 of windows. It went away for a bit and has now returned. We have an Open Ticket with Microsoft but getting no response.

[#14]

We too have an open MS ticket about this and multiple other issues. See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-virtual-desktop/having-multiple-problems-using-avd-publ... and let me know if you guys have some of these issues.

[#15]

It is still solved for us since April 2023 when SxSStack was updated.

You can run the following Run command to check your version:
Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\RDInfraAgent\SxsStack'

Current version for us in production now is: rdp-sxs230307600