taskbar preview and pop-up description vanish too quick

Hey everybody,

i hope you guys will help me solving this annoying issue:

when i hover the mouse over the taskbar icons the preview of an open file pops up, but only a fraction of a second. normally the preview used to stay open as long as i point the cursor on it. as the preview vanishes immediately i cannot switch between open files anymore by using this taskbar preview feature. i recognized two more things that maybe belong to together with my dexcribed problem: the pop-up description of a file vanishes also too quickly. with pop-up description i mean that tiny box that shows up when i hover the mouse over it and contains the name or some information of the file. it vanishes also way too quickely than it did normally.
the other thing is when i open e.g. firefox, it is always in the background despite it is the activated application. with background i mean that i must always click into the window before i can type something in my google start page. some days ago when i opened firefox i could always start typing immediately without "activating" the window. and the funny thing is: when click on taskbar and hover over the icons the preview function works perfectly normal!
all these things used to work properly some days ago, but i needed to format c and reinstall win 7, now the preview feature isn't working properly anymore which is really strange...
i already looked for some online help but i could only find hints concerning how to enable or disable the previews or how to change mouse hover time before a pop-up displays. the solutions were always just simple clicks within the control panel or a change in the registry. maybe this issue is to solve as easy as these ones...

Thanks a lot!
oli

Mouse Hover Time - Change

hi seekermeister,
that didn't help unfortunately. it just made the preview in the taskbar display earlier. i also tried Taskbar Thumbnail Previews - Change Delay Time
and set the delay to the suggested 100 milliseconds. but that didn't change anything significantly eithter...

no ideas?

tiko said:

...delay to the suggested 100 milliseconds. but that didn't change anything significantly eithter...

100 ms ?? Read in wikipedia :P
1 ms = 0,001 sec
100 ms 0,1 sec
Dude! Try change to 1000 ms (1 sec) or 5000 (5 sec). Hope I helped.

Hi BinaryUser01010,

thank you, but that had no effect either. it just made the thumbnail pop up later.....

but i'm quite sure now that it isn't a problem with delay time, i guess it's rather a problem of windows 7 that it cannot distinguish between open programs and activated windows anymore - e.g.: when i start firefox by clicking on the icon in the taskbar, the taskbar is activated - that's why i can't start typing immediately in the google search field and must activate firefox first. but when the taskbar is activated the thumbnail preview works perfectly fine. when firefox or any other program is activated the preview stopped working.

I've got the same behaviour on my laptop and I found when it happens.
When the laptop is plugged in and the battery is charging but it is close to 100% (95% in my situation), the battery charging is intermmittent. The battery led of the laptop, in fact, is flashing.
When this occur, the taskbar (so the ALT-TAB) hides too quickly. If I remove the plug, the taskbar is stable again. When the plug is in and the battery led is not flashing (because is fully charged - and the led is off - or is charging - and the led is always on) then the taskbar is stable too.
In other words it seem that Windows 7 synchronize the taskbar with the led of the battery of my laptop :)

Software is so funny!

richc46 said:

In lieu of a better suggestion, just use system restore from a time prior to the change and enjoy your Windows 7.

IlRiccardo said:

I've got the same behaviour on my laptop and I found when it happens.
When the laptop is plugged in and the battery is charging but it is close to 100% (95% in my situation), the battery charging is intermmittent. The battery led of the laptop, in fact, is flashing.
When this occur, the taskbar (so the ALT-TAB) hides too quickly. If I remove the plug, the taskbar is stable again. When the plug is in and the battery led is not flashing (because is fully charged - and the led is off - or is charging - and the led is always on) then the taskbar is stable too.
In other words it seem that Windows 7 synchronize the taskbar with the led of the battery of my laptop :)

Software is so funny!

My flicker is on my desktop PC.

richc46 said:

In lieu of a better suggestion, just use system restore from a time prior to the change and enjoy your Windows 7.

System restore had no effect.
Swapping mouse also - no effect.

Gotta be an answer.