How to to disable Taskbar Thumbnail Preview in Windows 7 using the Registry
Warning: Improperly modifying the Windows Registry can cause Windows to not operate correctly. Therefore if you do not feel comfortable editing the Windows Registry then you can download a registry file to perform these steps for you. Otherwise, please continue with these steps:
1. Close all open windows so you are at your desktop.
2. Click on the start button and enter Regedit in the search field.
3. When User Account Control asks if you would like to allow this program to make changes, click on the Yes button.
4. Navigate to the following Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
5. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value named ExtendedUIHoverTime under the above key.
6. When the value has been created, double-click on the ExtendedUIHoverTime value and click on the Decimal option.
7. In the Value data: field enter the delay you want. For every second you want the delay you should add 1000. So if you want a 10 second delay you should enter 10000 into this field.
8. When done press the OK button and then close the Registry Editor.
9. To put these changes into effect you can reboot, logoff and logon again, or kill the Explorer.exe process, which will automatically restart.
The Windows 7 Thumbnail Taskbar Preview should now be so delayed that it is effectively no longer working.
If you did not feel comfortable modifying the Windows Registry, then you can just download the following file to your desktop and double-click on it. When Windows asks if you want to continue to add the data from the reg file, allow it to do so, and the ExtendedUIHoverTime value will be added for you automatically with a delay of 10 seconds. Then reboot or logoff/logon for these changes to go into affect.
