Why is the ‘Use Aero Peek to Preview the Desktop’ Option Disabled on my machine with Windows 7?

In one of my previous posts, I had written about the ‘Show Desktop and the Aero Peek Feature in Windows 7’. Emma commented on that post saying that the option was grayed out on her machine. This is what it looks like when the option is not available on your machine

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Here are some pointers to help you resolve this issue:

1. Run the ‘Windows Experience Index’ assessment test on your Windows 7 machine to rate the performance of your hardware. If you get a score of 3.0 or more for the Graphics component, you are good to go to use this feature. Here’s the sample assessment test results of a machine.

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2. Once you have run the assessment test and have got a score of 3.0 or above, go to Control Panel > Performance Information and Tools > Click on ‘Adjust Visuals Effects’

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Make sure that these three checkboxes are checked

- Animate controls and elements inside windows
- Enable desktop composition
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

3. You can also try enabling Aero theme on your machine. To do so, right click on your desktop > Personalize > Choose an Aero Theme. Also make sure the Color scheme is 32-bit.

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If neither of the steps shown above works, check these links over here for other possible solutions

Aero Peek problems

Aero Peek not available or not working

Hopefully these steps will resolve the issue and you will be able to preview the desktop with Aero Peek

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About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal
Suprotim Agarwal, Developer Technologies MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) is the founder and contributor for DevCurry, DotNetCurry and SQLServerCurry. He is the Chief Editor of a Developer Magazine called DNC Magazine. He has also authored two Books - 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls. and The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Follow him on twitter @suprotimagarwal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done Microsoft... That's a very intuitive way to configure an OS. Why put so much effort into designing a new taskbar and stuff which is supposed to make the computer OS more intuitive for the average user, when there are still a lot of checkboxes that mysteriously become grayed out, or that re-set or re-check themselves e.g. the folder read-only checkbox?

I hope Bill Gates will finally one day start to use his own OS for himself, and that he notices the inconsistencies.

Prasad Thale said...

Just disable VNC or other display mirroring driver.
Hope this discussion is closed.