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Somewhere along the line, some PC performance app altered how the "Show Desktop" button in the bottom-right of Windows 7 works. By default, it takes a second to activate when you hover over it. But now, the exact moment I hover over it, the screen goes blank, and it's quite annoying.

The tool(s) which most likely did this was Advanced System Care (and its multiple additional apps). I'm guessing there may be a registry setting somewhere I can tweak to fix this.

How can I revert this particular setting so that the desktop doesn't show the exact second I hover over the "Show Desktop" button in the bottom-right of my screen?

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  • "How can I revert this particular setting " - Use Windows' "System Restore", that's what it's for.
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 16:20
  • @Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 For people who are afraid to do things like change registry entries, not to revert one tiny little setting.
    – Jerry Dodge
    Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 19:09
  • Plus I only use system restore if something's corrupted. This is just one particular setting. It's highly illogical to revert to a restore point just to fix one setting.
    – Jerry Dodge
    Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 20:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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If you are comfortable editing your registry, the relevant key should be HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime. The value is in milliseconds.

Relevant information was found here.

As and31415 points out, the key can simply be deleted to restore the setting to the default.

After changing the setting explorer will need to be restarted. This is done most easily by logging out and back in.

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  • Awesome, and I'm assuming it also requires a restart of Explorer.exe to apply the changes. Unless there's a Windows API call or message I could call to apply the change?
    – Jerry Dodge
    Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 5:03
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    Yes, you'll have to restart explorer. You can log off and back on, or there's always the option of killing explorer and restarting it from the task manager.
    – Yozomiri
    Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 5:05
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    @JerryDodge As the value doesn't exist by default, you can also restore the original time delay by deleting the DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime registry value.
    – and31415
    Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 8:03

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