There must be some way (perhaps at the application level) to turn this off. My Win7 box shows the previews just as you describe above, _except_ for Safari, which instead shows a list of tabs, without previews, regardless of which Safari window they're in.
Mike
January 13, 2012 11:36 AM
Ahh, crap. I was hoping it was an article telling me how to stop those annoying popups when I pass my mouse over some mini-link or whatever it would be called. An example would be "hard disk" in your Caveat box. Just happening to pass the cursor past it causes it to pop up and then it stays there until I specifically hit the Close button.
I suppose I could tighten the popup blocker, but that causes me to take special steps to authorize a popup that I actually CLICK on. Of course, the quick answer is just avoid passing the mouse all over the page. Harder to do than it sounds.
Really, if that's my only problem in my computer life, I sure can't complain. Still...
Connor
January 13, 2012 3:30 PM
Another option to this problem is to disable the desktop Window Manager. Instead of a whole window coming up when you hover your mouse over an icon in the taskbar, just the name of the program appears. It is still basically the same, but the windows are a lot smaller. To do this go to start and type in "services.msc" and hit enter. Hit yes to the UAC if it comes up and then in the window that pops up navigate to "Desktop Window Manager". Click on it and on the left part of the window there is some information about it. One of the options is to stop the service. Click that, wait a few seconds for it to finish, and you are done. To start it again, go to the same place and hit start.
John S.
January 13, 2012 7:12 PM
After reading this and then reading it again, (i still may be missing something?) Why would one "hover" over the icon unless one would want to view what was open? In which case wouldn't the window pop up be a handy tool? Instead of clicking on it and bringing up the screen showing what it actually is? How could this action be considered "annoying"?
As Mike stated above, "Just don't hover over the icon" If you can't control your mouse that well, there are settings in the Ease Of Access Center that make the mouse more user friendly. Just sayin'
The complaints that I hear are from people who move the mouse out of the way while they do something else, only to accidentally (and apparently frequently) have one of these popups obscure what they're working on because they happened to put the mouse in the wrong palce.
14-Jan-2012
Mark
January 13, 2012 9:50 PM
There is actually an easier way to do it than that. All you have to do is right click the taskbar and go to properties. When there uncheck the Aero selection thus turning off the preview screens appearing.
That actually turns off more than just thus, but if it works, great.
14-Jan-2012
DuLee
January 14, 2012 3:44 AM
As I have mentioned many times before -- and will probably mention many times again -- I love ask-leo. But I also like my head spinning!
Good gosh, don't hack your registry. Just do what Mark said!
Lee I
January 14, 2012 3:18 PM
Good grief. These little previews are the handiest things in the world. I only have 8 windows open at the moment and do frequent switching between applications and among windows in the same application. Isn't that what they invented Windows for?
Paul
January 16, 2012 6:39 AM
i've been looking for a way to stop those preview popups ever since i got win 7 the month it was released! i'm in the group leo mentioned above: "people who move the mouse out of the way while they do something else, only to accidentally (and apparently frequently) have one of these popups obscure what they're working on because they happened to put the mouse in the wrong place." In my case it even opened those windows full screen some times (don't ask me Why!) I knew about the manual registry tweak but not that simple link Leo gave us to do it "automatically" and that's what i did and it worked great...Thanks Leo!
fahad
February 3, 2012 8:04 AM
thaaaaanks very much :))
i did exactly the same you did above
eccept for the value, i typed 90000
and it worked very well
Comments
Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
January 12, 2012 11:17 AM
There must be some way (perhaps at the application level) to turn this off. My Win7 box shows the previews just as you describe above, _except_ for Safari, which instead shows a list of tabs, without previews, regardless of which Safari window they're in.
January 13, 2012 11:36 AM
Ahh, crap. I was hoping it was an article telling me how to stop those annoying popups when I pass my mouse over some mini-link or whatever it would be called. An example would be "hard disk" in your Caveat box. Just happening to pass the cursor past it causes it to pop up and then it stays there until I specifically hit the Close button.
I suppose I could tighten the popup blocker, but that causes me to take special steps to authorize a popup that I actually CLICK on. Of course, the quick answer is just avoid passing the mouse all over the page. Harder to do than it sounds.
Really, if that's my only problem in my computer life, I sure can't complain. Still...
January 13, 2012 3:30 PM
Another option to this problem is to disable the desktop Window Manager. Instead of a whole window coming up when you hover your mouse over an icon in the taskbar, just the name of the program appears. It is still basically the same, but the windows are a lot smaller. To do this go to start and type in "services.msc" and hit enter. Hit yes to the UAC if it comes up and then in the window that pops up navigate to "Desktop Window Manager". Click on it and on the left part of the window there is some information about it. One of the options is to stop the service. Click that, wait a few seconds for it to finish, and you are done. To start it again, go to the same place and hit start.
January 13, 2012 7:12 PM
After reading this and then reading it again, (i still may be missing something?) Why would one "hover" over the icon unless one would want to view what was open? In which case wouldn't the window pop up be a handy tool? Instead of clicking on it and bringing up the screen showing what it actually is? How could this action be considered "annoying"?
As Mike stated above, "Just don't hover over the icon" If you can't control your mouse that well, there are settings in the Ease Of Access Center that make the mouse more user friendly. Just sayin'
14-Jan-2012
January 13, 2012 9:50 PM
There is actually an easier way to do it than that. All you have to do is right click the taskbar and go to properties. When there uncheck the Aero selection thus turning off the preview screens appearing.
14-Jan-2012
January 14, 2012 3:44 AM
As I have mentioned many times before -- and will probably mention many times again -- I love ask-leo. But I also like my head spinning!
Good gosh, don't hack your registry. Just do what Mark said!
January 14, 2012 3:18 PM
Good grief. These little previews are the handiest things in the world. I only have 8 windows open at the moment and do frequent switching between applications and among windows in the same application. Isn't that what they invented Windows for?
January 16, 2012 6:39 AM
i've been looking for a way to stop those preview popups ever since i got win 7 the month it was released! i'm in the group leo mentioned above: "people who move the mouse out of the way while they do something else, only to accidentally (and apparently frequently) have one of these popups obscure what they're working on because they happened to put the mouse in the wrong place." In my case it even opened those windows full screen some times (don't ask me Why!) I knew about the manual registry tweak but not that simple link Leo gave us to do it "automatically" and that's what i did and it worked great...Thanks Leo!
February 3, 2012 8:04 AM
thaaaaanks very much :))
i did exactly the same you did above
eccept for the value, i typed 90000
and it worked very well
thanks again you genius
To post a comment on "How do I disable live taskbar previews in Windows 7?", please return to that article's main page.