Windows 7 alt-tab window disappears to back when aero peek is enabled

There seem to be two main (known) culprits here.

1. Desktop Gadgets (sidebar.exe). If you can live without them, try disabling them:
   Right click desktop > select "View" > uncheck "Show desktop gadgets". This didn't work for me.
2. Microsoft Intellipoint v8.1+. This was the solution that worked for me. It seems when they added support for the Microsoft Touch Mouse, the updated Intellipoint software introduced this bug. To fix it:
   Go to "Add or remove programs" and uninstall Microsoft Intellipoint. Instant fix, no reboot required.

If neither of those solutions work for you, I would try closing all open applications except for something innocuous, like notepad. Then open up your task manager and kill off suspicious processes one at a time until the problem is resolved. Obviously, make sure you don't kill a process that will destabilize your system. This could be a very tedious task.

This last post on the page in this thread helped me find the answer.

After reading this forum thread I found, they seem to have concluded that it's an OS bug.

The closest you may get to a (consistent) solution is to switch to something like VistaSwitcher.

Oh, and sue the heck out of Microsoft too.

Someone took the trouble to debug it and write a program to fix it:

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/alttab-bug-worsened-by-ie-10-but-fix-found/

In all situations where the bug appeared there was a new window that was:

1. Always-on-top (WS_EX_TOPMOST)
2. Visible (WS_VISIBLE)
3. Owned by ipoint.exe, sidebar.exe, or iexplore.exe
4. Zero size and located at 0,0

...

In short, if you are currently experiencing this bug and you want to test my fix, run AltTabFixOnce.exe, look at the output, and see if it works. If the fix appears to work and you want to be rid of this scourge forever then copy AltTabFixContinuous to your startup folder. Both programs, and their source code, are available here. That is all.