There is a problem on some Surface machines (Surface Pro 4 specifically) where the thumbnail previews on the taskbar disappear quickly… to quickly to be useful. The issue only occurs when using a power adapter and not when running on battery power. The solutions are:

  1. Disable the battery driver in the Device Manager (Microsoft Surface ACPI-Comliant Method Battery)
  2. Replace the power adapter (model 1625 seems to be problematic, and model 1706 seems to work fine)
  3. Update registry settings (see link below)

The issue and solution in detail can be found here:  https://www.tecklyfe.com/workaround-taskbar-thumbnail-previews-disappear-quickly/