Solved Alt-Tab and Taskbar Previews Disappear

[azweibel]

Hey, all!

This may be a problem others have had, but I've looked everywhere and haven't been able to find a good answer, yet. I'm dealing with a few bugs.

The first bug relates to alt-tab. When I hold alt and press tab, the pop-up with previews of each active window appears as it should, however after about a half a second, it disappears. In that half a second, I can quickly alt-tab from the active window to the one directly behind it, and if I hold tab, it quickly cycles through all the others with the pop-up staying up, but the minute I let go of tab for the first time, the pop-up disappears and nothing happens.

I have a similar problem with my taskbar. The Aero theme includes the great feature of hovering the mouse over the icon for an open program to show a small preview of that window (or all the windows in a given application). When I do this, the preview pops up breifly, but then quickly disappears as well. If I move my mouse slowly across the icon, each time the mouse stops, the preview refreshes, but the preview disappears when I try to move my mouse over it to, for example, select one Word document out of 3 that I'm working on.

A related bug to this may be that when I try to click-drag to reorder the icons on my taskbar, the click-drag only "grabs" the icon for a half a second before releasing it (even though my mouse is still down) back to where it originally came from.

I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on a refurbished Alienware M17X that I received from Dell a few weeks ago (in replacement of a dead Inspiron 1720... go figure how they made THAT decision!). Any help would be much appreciated. I will gladly try to take screenshots or record video if any of my explanations were unclear.

Thanks!

 

[Brink]

Hello Azweibel, and welcome to Seven Forums.


You can use CTRL+ALT+TAB , and press tab to cycle through the open windows instead to avoid them closing on you so fast.

Since this is a laptop, I bet it may be your tapping or sensitivity settings for your touchpad causing the pointer to lose focus while hovered over the taskbar icon's previews.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[kotpierdzibonk]

Go to Control Panel -> Advanced (or Advanced System Settings) -> in the section Performance click on "Settings..." button -> in the custom list of Visual Effects uncheck "Enable Aero Peek" -> click "Apply" button

Now the alt-tab window will stay afloat as long as you want.

 

[IlRiccardo]

If it's a laptop, try without the plug in.

 

[TAxxOUTBR3AKxx]

I am actually having the EXACT same problem on my Alienware M17x Laptop running Windows 7 x64.

 

[ammouri]

Same problem to on the same system (AW M17x) with Win7 Ultimate x64.

In case you find solution please update.

 

[Pusspa]

have you tried using mouseflip3d Helpful Tip: Vista Flip3D Mouse Shortcut

 

[ammouri]

have you tried using mouseflip3d Helpful Tip: Vista Flip3D Mouse Shortcut

And how is this related to our problem?

 

[Pusspa]

have you tried using mouseflip3d Helpful Tip: Vista Flip3D Mouse Shortcut

And how is this related to our problem?

well for one, i thought it might help with cycling through the apps, and two, nice attitude buddy. I wasnt telling you to use it, I was just offering a suggestion.

 

[boohbah]

have you tried using mouseflip3d Helpful Tip: Vista Flip3D Mouse Shortcut

And how is this related to our problem?

possibly because flip 3d allows you to rotate through open windows and apps.as op wishes to do.
we are all volunteers here at seven forums and treat one another with respect where due, it would be prudent as a newcomer here to bare this in mind

 

[Dom]

Looks like everyone has with the same problem also have the same laptops. You can either contact Alienware for help, or try and get an external USB mouse to see if the problem still exists.

 

[macaws]

I had this same issue, and ended up doing a full uninstall of my Logitech keyboard/mouse software, and reinstalled with the latest version. This seems to have resolved the issue. I've seen other Logitech products, particularly USB headphones/cameras, as the source of the issue. I suspect a full uninstall and then a reinstall with the latest version of any and all Logitech drivers & software may resolve the problem. I am running Win7 Pro 64bit.
Hopefully this will help.

If nothing else, I'm guessing a clean boot will help narrow down if it's a broken profile/driver, or a program that might just need to be updated. Instructions on performing a clean boot in Windows are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796

I'd just re-enable each item and reboot until the problem re-appears, assuming a clean boot fixes it. Just be sure to note what you enable each time!

 

[rafd123]

I recently starting having this problem.

In my case, I've narrowed it down to the Windows Gadgets (i.e. sidebar.exe). Once I closed all my gadgets, the problem went away; alternatively, when I killed sidebar.exe, the problem went away.

 

[notuo]

Just happened to me and I follow the gadget tip.

1) I kill all my gadgets and the problem disappear.
2) I reinstall one by one and none of them caused the issue.

Now I have the alt-tab as always and all my gadgets as well.

 

[notuo]

First I post again to push this again.

After all this is not fixed.

If I reboot with the gadgets "on", the problem persists. If I reboot without the gadgets no problem and I can turn on the gadgets and works fine.

Any other person has any info on this?

Regards,


BTW. The WINKEY-TAB combination works fine in either case I exposed here.

 

[Blackhawk131]

What I did, which makes no sense to me, is turn off Aero Peek in system properties. Now I am able to use Alt+Tab and the selection screen stays up. I show no signs of anything changing other than fixing the problem of the Alt+Tab screen. Not sure what is the problem with Aero Peek, but I guess I will run with this for now. Seems really strange!

 

[timmlyy]

yea turning off aero peek works for me. i guess it lets you "peek" at what youre trying to preview? thanks kotpierdzibonk! just cuz i read his post first haha. im surprised not many people tried that. im pretty sure it would have helped a lot of people...

 

[Giriath]

I've had this issue. In addition to causing your alt-tab and taskbar preview windows to flicker and disappear it can also upset your music player (in my case foobar2000), making it do things like switch tracks when you do any input whatsoever.

I have found that the most likely cause of the issue for everyone is a USB device, such as my Razer Lycosa. I advise installing the latest drivers for all your USB devices and, if the problem persists, disconnecting them one by one and replicating the problem until you find which device is the cause.

 

[Deminetix]

Funny that!

Funny you mention the Razer Lycosa, as i am having this problem on my newly built PC and i am using the Lycosa keyboard. I will install the drivers from the website and i bet it will be fixed.

Thanks

 

[Blackhawk131]

This is not a keyboard issue but a windows registry/setting. I can now hold down alt+tab for about 10 seconds since I made the following change in the registry.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AltTab]
"LivePreview_ms"=dword:0000ea60

Hope this helps others.