Thumbnail Preview not shown for pictures in Vista

Thumbnail Preview Not Shown for Pictures in Vista?

Q: I have a lot of pictures on my Vista computer. When I try to find a photograph in a folder the icon does not show me what the photograph looks like. It is just a generic mountain and lake scene for every picture. How can I turn on the actual picture to be depicted in the icon of the file?

In the Views drop-down in the Task pane, select one of the following views:

Medium Icons
Large Icons
Extra Large Icons

If thumbnail previews are not generated, then open Folder Options applet via Control Panel or from Start – Search box (by running the command "control folders"). In the View tab of Folder Options, uncheck the following option:

Always show icons, never thumbnails

Click OK.

If that does not work, try clearing the thumbnail cache using the Disk Cleanup tool. See article How to clear the thumbnail cache in Windows Vista? for more information.

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42 Comments

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said this on Sunday, August 15th 2010 6:39 am

I still can not keep Vista Ultimate SP2 to always show thumbnail. Settings correct. Cache thumbnails (and obviously more) cleaned with Windows Disk Cleaner, CCleaner, Glary, Fcleaner, and more, and of course manually (%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer). Sometimes it will then show thumbnails, then after a bit it will show mainly the default icon, then all are default icons. Sometimes doing all the cleaning above works, sometimes not. Is this not a bug Microsoft thought of fixing over the decade instead of adding in more useless features so they can charge more money? Just one bug fix, you know?
Moe

said this on Wednesday, July 21st 2010 4:03 pm

Great help, thanks a million, just to let everyone having problems know that they need to upgrade Vista to service pack 2 1st b4 attempting to use this help topic information.