|
DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
January 31, 2010
Q.
Is it possible to remove the delay that
always occurs when Aero Peek is initiated in
Windows 7?
A.
First to explain a little about what Aero
Peek for those not fortunate enough to
already be using Windows 7 Home Premium and
above on a computer with enough memory and
video to support it.
Aero Peek
gives you a preview of the open application
in a thumbnail without actually opening
them. Moving your mouse pointer to a program
icon in the taskbar displays a small
thumbnail of the documents in that
application that are currently opened. If
you have Microsoft Word opened with three
documents displayed, hovering over the Word
icon in the taskbar will display thumbnails
of these three documents.
By simply
hovering over one of these thumbnails, the
associated document is opened to full screen
allowing you to view it. Clicking on it will
make that window active and take you to it.
There is by default, a delay between the
time you hover the mouse over an icon until
the described action occurs. This is the
delay the questioner wants to remove.
Also, on
the far right end of the taskbar there is a
small box that is labeled "Show Desktop". If
you have one or more window open, hovering
your cursor over it will cause the open
windows to become transparent showing the
desktop. Clicking on it will minimize all
windows and take you to your desktop.
Clicking on it again will reverse this
action.
Earlier
versions of Windows had something called
Show Desktop that could be activated by
clicking on an icon in the task bar. This
icon was usually installed by default and
would minimize all open windows which in
effect did show the desktop. Many people
deleted this icon because the same thing can
be accomplished by pressing the Windows logo
key + M key combination. In these cases, the
windows that were minimized had to be
re-opened individually.
But in
Windows 7, this has taken on a whole new,
much neater way to show the desktop without
actually minimizing anything. It just makes
them transparent. Also, if you do choose to
make the desktop active by clicking on Show
Desktop and actually minimizing the active
windows, clicking it again will restore them
to their previous state.
OK, now
that we all know what Aero Peek is, here is
how to remove the delay incurred when
activating it. You will have to add a DWord
and value to a registry key. In
HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
create a new DWORD called
DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime and set its
value to zero. To restore the default, set
this value to hex 000001f4 (500 decimal).
As
always, be forewarned that improperly
editing the registry may cause the computer
to malfunction and possibly cease to
function altogether. To prevent this, as
usual I have written a little program that
will make the registry change for you
safely. It can be downloaded from the
download section of this site of by clicking
HERE. |
