do you mean when the program you wrote regains focus it wont accept joystic input or that it doesnt when out of focus?
if its b> out of focus then thats how windows does its thing, to play a game it should always be in focus hence why most are full screen save for the casual market (which are mostly mouse driven)
for example your choice of citing note pad if not pad is out of focus whatever keys you type dont appear in note pad because windows or you has moved the focus elsewhere and keypresses are going to that program to deal with (its just that notepad isnt geared up to accept user input from a gamepad)
again if yours was a wsad+mouse fps and note pad had focus all your wsad space and mouse input would be kinda like this
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww space wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwd
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