How to disable Taskbar Thumbnail Preview in Windows 7

A feature of Windows 7 is that it will show you a preview, or small thumbnail image, of the open windows for a particular program when you hover over it. For example, if you have 3 Internet Explorer windows open and hover your mouse cursor over the Internet Explorer icon on your taskbar, it will pop-up 3 small images of each of your Internet Explorer windows and allow you to select the one you want to make active. An example of this feature can be seen in the image below.

Though, in theory this feature is a good one, for many other people it is really annoying and can actually get in the way of productivity when these thumbnails pop-up over work you are trying to do.

Unfortunately, Microsoft decided to not provide a method that can be used to disable this feature in Windows 7.

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.
10. The Windows 7 Thumbnail Taskbar Preview should now be so delayed that it is effectively no longer working.

This is so Cool!!!!!!