Fix lasted a couple of hours - bug occurring again. Only thing I changed was I took out the power supply to bring the laptop to another room. Once I plugged it back in (i hadnt turned it off), the preview issue was occurring again.
Thus, it does appear to be battery\ac adapter related... ah well.
I made an account just to share this with all of you (even though I've lurked here a long while) because I was so excited to finally fix it. I Googled the battery issue, and ended up here (first hit):
Vostro 1000 can't identify battery?
The last post is mine. Here it is:
Guess what? THAT fixed the Thumbnail Preview/Alt+Tab disappearing issue!!! WTF?! I don't know why, exactly, but it does!I've had this problem on my wife's computer for a long while, but I fixed it! This laptop is a Dell Vostro 1000 with Windows 7 Profession, 32-bit.
First, I went here:
Drivers & Downloads
Click on BIOS, download the update. Once it's downloaded, hold Shift and while holding it right-click. Run as Administrator. Once it's done it will reboot your laptop.
I logged in, but still saw the message that said 0% battery with the battery X'ed out. Now, while the laptop is LOGGED IN & plugged into AC power, unplug the battery, wait a second, and plug it in again.
Windows recognized the battery and it's now at 100%!
I got it working by shutting down my computer and taking out the battery and power supply, then hoding down the power button for a couple of seconds. Thankyou Andrei!!! :) been driving me nuts for months!
I thought I'd update this for anyone arriving via a search. I've had the vanishing tooltips with Inspiron 1501 laptop for years. I'm still using the 1501 (with dual-core, Win7/32, RAM and HDD updated, WiFi n), it works fine, no point in updating. I periodically look for news on this problem, there seems to be none. Someone with a different Dell laptop reported in this thread that a BIOS update fixed the problem, which is what I'd expect, but there'll be no new 1501 BIOS. So every couple of month you have to pull out the battery, unplug, press power switch for 15". but otherwise the machine works fine, 6 years old plus.
Just want to post a reply to this because this was the first google search result when I was trying to fix my issue... I searched "windows taskbar hover over icons disappears" - This has been bothering me for a month and has been really frustrating.. I noticed people mentioned it having to do with the battery, and then I remembered I said "yes" to power manager to stop charging the battery at 50%.. I changed it back to "always fully charge battery" - and now the issue is gone!! How silly. For reference it's my work laptop, a lenovo thinkpad.
Rabmonk006, I had to create an account just to tell you: thank you, thank you, thank you! So strange that a Lenovo battery setting would cause this issue, but I'm glad you found the solution. Thanks again!
Just want to post a reply to this because this was the first google search result when I was trying to fix my issue... I searched "windows taskbar hover over icons disappears" - This has been bothering me for a month and has been really frustrating.. I noticed people mentioned it having to do with the battery, and then I remembered I said "yes" to power manager to stop charging the battery at 50%.. I changed it back to "always fully charge battery" - and now the issue is gone!! How silly. For reference it's my work laptop, a lenovo thinkpad.
Hi guys, I think I might have some helpful information on this old problem -- I recently started experiencing the same behavior (preview panes in Alt Tab and Taskbar disappearing much too quickly) after setting up Battery Optimization (lets the battery decline to 50% before recharging). Turned off Battery Optimization and the problem immediately stopped (no reboot, no restart of Explorer).
As a developer my guess it has to do with the battery optimizer checking the battery level every few seconds (which due to some bad coding somewhere flips off the previews). I noticed some other people had battery-related fixes, hope this helps. If nothing else you might try fiddling with the battery settings or even removing the battery and running on AC.
This was on a Lenovo T440.
Adding this solution here since a lot of people will probably find it through Google like I did.
EDIT: Now I see Rabmonk006 beat me to that fix. But at least I can confirm! This drove me nuts for several hours.
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