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

Freakgeek

said this on Sunday, September 6th 2009 1:15 am

Thanks a lot …This was pain in ass.
Julie

said this on Friday, August 21st 2009 9:53 pm

Thanks a lot !!! it works…hehe :X:X:X
keith

said this on Wednesday, August 5th 2009 4:59 pm

Thanks so very much. Like lots of people this has been driving me nuts!
I cleared the thumbnail cache and then unchecked the box in folder options and……….then it worked just fine.
zedisking

said this on Monday, July 27th 2009 11:10 pm

fantastic fix, I am very greatful no more clicking preview on each one to find out what it is
Stymied by Microsoft

said this on Tuesday, July 21st 2009 7:49 am

Thanks. So Simple yet who knew?!Now I can actually use this thing . Almost turned to the Mac side
Microsoft and Gateway were no help.
Lilune

said this on Wednesday, July 1st 2009 3:04 am

thank you so much!! this was driving me crazy
mike

said this on Sunday, June 21st 2009 1:58 pm

haha, whats funny is that when I did a few clean vista installs some times it would show the thumbnails and sometimes it wont. weird ha? so which is the default who knows…
noori

said this on Monday, June 1st 2009 4:05 pm

many many thanks, you did fix one of my biggest headeche in vista ;)
Kummud

said this on Saturday, May 30th 2009 11:54 am

Thanks lot … I have Italian version of vista …therefore I could not find these option. Now its OK I have translated ur article and found it.
Tarlochan Singh Kharoud

said this on Monday, May 18th 2009 10:11 pm

thank you a lot man, it is working now