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How to Enable or Disable Taskbar Thumbnail Preview in Windows 7

1. Click on Start button and type GPEdit.msc in Instant Search text box, then hit Enter.
2. Navigate to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar in left pane of Local Group Policy Editor.
3. Locate and double click on Turn off taskbar thumbnails in right pane of Local Group Policy editor.

4. Select Enabled radion button.
5. Click OK to make the change effective.
6. Logoff and logon again or restart computer if needed.
7. To re-enable Taskbar preview feature in Windows 7, just set the value to Disabled or Not Configured.

Alternatively, it’s also possible to manually set or configure the registry key to disable Taskbar thumbnails function.

1. Click on Start button and type RegEdit in Instant Search text box, then hit Enter.
2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key:

3. In the right pane, right click on a blank spacce, and then select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. Type TaskbarNoThumbnail as the name for the new registry value data.
5. Double click on TaskbarNoThumbnail to modify its value data.
6. Type 1 and click on OK.

7. Logoff and logon again or restart computer if needed.
8. To re-enable Taskbar thumbnails again, just right click on TaskbarNoThumbnail and click Delete to remove the whole registry key, or set TaskbarNoThumbnail value data to 0.

Above manual registry editing step can be done easily by simply downloading the following registry registration files, and then double click it to merge into system registry.
To Disable Taskbar Thumbnails Preview: Disable-Taskbar-Thumbnails.reg
To Enable Taskbar Thumbnails Preview: Enable-Taskbar-Thumbnails.reg
Note: Unfortunately, the trick to disable and turn off Taskbar opened window thumbnail preview may or may not work and the setting is reserved for Windows Vista only, depends on build of Windows 7. Here’s few other alternative workarounds to disable thumbnail preview on Windows 7 Taskbar.