I have a strange scenario in a C++ builder 2010 project I have in front of me. Every once in a while modal forms seems to end up behind the main form. It seems like this occurs if I have the main window, open a secondary window using a button on the main window and the selects a button on the main window that will produce a modal form popup. The modal form then ends up behind the main window and I have to press escape to close it.
Opening it again produces the desired outcome with the modal window on top.
Sometime once this is done it seems like the main window starts putting itself in front of every window. Not just its own modal or child windows but even Windows Explorer windows and other programs. Update: This occurs every time a modal window has ended up behind the main window and has been closed using escape. Only way to get the main windows to behave normal again is to restart the application.
I have checked and fiddled with the FormStyle and PopupMode properties of both the main window and the modal popup that was the initial problem. But it doesn’t seem to help.
The main window has
FormStyle: fsNormal
PopupMode: pmNone
Since the main window starts acting strange it feels like the issue is with the main window somehow. I tried specifically telling the modal window to use the main window as its parent and trying all settings and combinations of FormStyle and PopupMode without any change.
To add to this all of this is reported to have worked pre-Vista (yes this is an old and large application… hehe)
Update: The main culprit seems to be the Main Window that ends up on-top of everything. This causes the modal forms to end up behind it and look like something is wrong with them. This only happens the first time and reopening the modal form draws it in front of the Main Window. Even though the Main Window is still in front of everything else on the desktop. To add to the confusion, when the Main Window decides to start acting like this feels very random.
The problem turned out to be a combination of the known issues with modal forms ending up behind other forms. Google
"delphi modal form hidden behind other form"or something similar and you will find a lot of info.Another contributing factor was the fact that an implementation to counteract these issues had been made to the application. This, along with changes to both Windows and VCL itself didn’t play ball very well. So I stripped all of the “now” unnecessary junk and rewrote how the application handled its windows and the issue was resolved.