How to Change the Delay of the Taskbar Preview Thumbnail in Windows 7

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In Windows 7, whenever you hover you mouse over the icons on desktop taskbar some nice previews pop-up showing you thumbnails of the windows which are opened on your desktop. That’s quite useful when you have a lot of windows opened and you can not keep track of what is happening on a particular window which is hidden by others. Now, if you look closely, you will notice that when you “touch” with your mouse an element sitting on the taskbar, the thumbnail will appear after some delay. After 400 milliseconds to be exact! Here is quick hack to change the delay of the Taskbar Preview Thumbnail and make it faster or slower.

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search field, type regedit and press Enter.
3. Locate the following folder: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\ Advanced
4. Right click the Advanced folder and from the menu, click New – DWORD (32-bit) Value.
5. Name the new key ExtendedUIHoverTime.
6. Now double click the key you just created, select Decimal under Base and assign it whatever value you wish (the value is expressed in milliseconds). For ex. assign it the value 1000 which is 1 seconds. (remember, default setting is 400).
7. Click OK.
8. Restart your computer for the change to take effect.