When you have set the cooperative level to DISCL_FOREGROUND and the focus switches to another application, Microsoft® Windows® might force your application to unacquire the keyboard. For this reason, you should check for the DIERR_INPUTLOST return value from the IDirectInputDevice8::GetDeviceData or IDirectInputDevice8::GetDeviceState methods and attempt to reacquire the keyboard, if necessary. (See Acquiring Devices.)

Note  You should not attempt to reacquire the keyboard on getting a DIERR_NOTACQUIRED error. If you do, you could get caught in an infinite loop: acquisition would again fail, you would get another DIERR_NOTACQUIRED error, and so on.