Can I stop windows 7 from fading windows on alt-tab?

Question

When you hit alt tab on windows 7 and stop for a second on a window, it hides all other windows. Is there any way to tell Windows 7 to use the old classic behavior?

Answer 1

The fade is controlled by a timer and the timeout can be adjusted to any time period you want. Therefore, by extending the timeout to a longer period of time, you can effectively disable the fade. To make the change requires an edit to the registry.

Open your Registry Editor (regedit) and create the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AltTab

In that key, create the following DWORD value:

LivePreview_ms

and set the value to the desired delay (in milliseconds) of when you want the fade to begin. Setting to something like 10,000 (decimal) will prevent the fade for a full 10 seconds.

NOTE: You'll have to restart Explorer to see the results....the easiest way to do that is logout and back in again or to reboot your machine.

Answer 2

In Advanced System Settings (accessible from the System control panel), click the Advanced tab, then the settings button for Performance.

In the list of Visual Effects the following affects this behavior:

• Enable desktop composition

You will need to uncheck this, doing so will remove aero effects sadly enough, so it's either one.