Suppress auto-window-switching

Suppose I have two windows open. (say hotmail and ebay)
I click on a message in the hotmail wwindow to open it and while it is doing that I switch to the ebay window to do something there while hotmail completes its task [yes, hotmail is truly that slow on my PC]. What can I do to prevent my PC from automatically switching back to hotmail window when it has finished that task ? It's jolly annoying to click on a button in the ebay window only to find that you've opened a message in the hotmail window instead because it had switched to make that the active window when you weren't looking for a sec !

When I select a window to be the active window I don't want the PC to choose anotheer ffor me ! How can I suppress this ?

Dumb_Question
4.September.2011

Compaq S5160 DT261A (Celeron 2.7GHz). Windows XP/SP3

 

Thank you for your suggestion Plodr. I have found that if I open two tabs rather than two windows, IE (which is what I am using; I find FF awkward) I can only run one tab at once which means that if one tab is busy I can't access the other tab, which defeats the point of the second tab.

I am sorry if my explanation is cumbersome, I will come up with a better one if it isn't understood.

If your experience is different, I would be happy to discuss...

Dumb_Question
5.September.2011

Compaq S5160 DT261A (Celeron 2.7GHz). Windows XP/SP3

 

Maybe it's because my computer is

i) infected with some kind of malware (I have AVG Free Version 2011 running at all times, when I scan it han't found anything amiss for months)

ii) just because my computer is old ?? (2001)

but I only seem to have this problem with accessing the internet, especially mail programs. Connect time can be inordinately long (up to 1 min for some sites). I use IE v8, I don't often update with the MS updates because in my experience they make my computer run more slowly than ever and create more problems than they ostensibly solve).

Maybe deleting those add-ons that I have turned off (most of them) would help ?


Dumb_Question
23.September.2011

Compaq Presario S5160 DT261A (Celeron 2.7GHz). MSI MS-6577 v2.1 1.5GB RAMWindows XP/SP3