Windows constantly losing focus??

I've had Windows 7 RC1 for a few months now, and up until now it's been working flawlessly. Now when I'm doing anything, I click with the mouse, the window loses focus to another window. This is hard to describe but I've noticed that some of the open programs on the taskbar also disappear but then reappear almost instantly while this is happening. If I have multiple programs open they'll even rearrange the order (not the pinned programs), ie: firefox open and i have control panel open, firefox will flicker, lose focus, then the program icon will disappear from the left of the control panel and then be on the right, as if I had opened it after I had opened Control Panel.

It might be important to note that I just installed a windows update yesterday, that's the only thing I've really changed.

I'm running a Dell XPS M1530, 2 gigs of ram, and I have about 8 gigs free on my windows drive. I'm running a GeForce 8600M GT driver version 176.44 (forceware drivers). I use a Logitech VX Nano mouse.

Has anyone else had these problems? I don't even really know how to diagnose the problem - I was thinking maybe driver issues or maybe even a mouse issue

Hello and Welcome to Windows7forums..

It sounds like either the Update you installed has caused corruption and as a result you have things acting strangely OR perhaps your GPU driver has become corrupt..

What exactly was the Update that you installed?

Beyond a simple restart first thing to do if you think it could be a windows update that did this to you would be to uninstall the most recent update. Go to Control Panel--> Programs and Features--> on the left click "show installed updates" The update installed date is the rightmost column. The only update i'm aware of is a security hotfix however, but the update you received notification about mat be system specific in which case i wouldn't know about it.

Well, apparently this is what updated:

Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB969604)
Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969679)
Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB967642)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB969682)
Update for Outlook 2007 Junk Email Filter (KB972691)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 (KB969682)
Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (KB957789)
Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (KB969907)
Security for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969559)
Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (KB969907)

Sorta wishing I had my Restore Points active right now...
Should I uninstall these updates? They're all marked as installed on August 12th

Sorry but i don't see anything there that is a glaring possibility. This is one reason that i don't use too many microsoft apps almost anyone of those office updates could have almost any affect on the OS msoffice is VERY intertwined in the OS. But that being said i'll repeat i don't see anything obvious. Without actually seeing the issue i don't have much to offer.
I assume you checked the obvious silly things like mouse batteries and stuck keys? As Radenight said you could try to re install your display adapter driver.

It could be just a coincidence on the updates thing.

I would watch Task Manager to see what spikes on the CPU to steal focus.
The is usually the easiest way to find the culprit.

I have never had it be an update or a driver cause this type of issue.
It is generally another app that causes it.

Well, since I wasn't really too enthusiastic about trying to go through everything and diagnose what the problem was, I thought that maybe creating a new profile and migrating my files there might solve any corruption that may have occurred by either the updates or some other software. Happy to report that the issue no longer exists under the new profile!

Glad to hear you were able to solve the issue quickly and without having to reinstall anything.. Well done..

I stopped the windows 7 action center and the "lost focus issue" disappeared. Maybe I was just lucky, but it worked for me