Microsoft Windows XP Top Ten Tips and Tricks – Windows Explorer Image Thumbnails

Posted • December 19, 2008 • Comments Off

How do you add image thumbnails to a folder in Windows Explorer?

When dealing with a folder in Microsoft Windows containing many images, it is often helpful to see a thumbnail representation of each of those images in the Windows Explorer display. One warning, turning on the thumbnail feature will increase the amount of resources being used by the operating system. Those darn little thumbnails take up space on the hard drive and in memory when they are being displayed. Depending on your system, the available resources, and the number of images involved, you can quickly slow down your PC to a crawl if you just do it willy-nilly.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder of images for which you would like to see thumbnails. On the Windows Explorer menu, click Tools | Folder Options to get to the Control Panel. Click the View tab:

Under the Files And Folders section, you will see the Do Not Cache Thumbnails check box. If this box is checked, there will be no thumbnails cached on your hard drive. So if you want thumbnails, you will want to uncheck it. Click OK after you’ve made your selection.
To start seeing thumbnails, you have to change views in Windows Explorer. On the menu bar, click View – Thumbnails, and Windows will replace the normal file icons with thumbnails of the images. Windows will also create a new file in that folder called Thumbs.db, where the thumbnail information is stored.

The Thumbs.db file will be created in every folder you designate to display thumbnails. To apply your changes to all Windows Explorer folders, navigate to Tools | Folder Options and click the View tab. From there, make your changes and click the Apply To All Folders button then click OK.

Late,
Gary Pool

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