Fix Corrupted Thumbnails

Fix Corrupted Thumbnails

Daves

Enabling Thumbnails

If you are sure you have Thumbnails enabled, you can skip this part. To make sure Thumbnails are enabled on your computer, do the following:

Step 1 – Open File Explorer

Step 2 – Click View, then Options. This should bring up the Folder Options window:

Step 3 – Click the View tab and Uncheck the box labeled, Always show icons, never thumbnails.

How To Fix A Corrupted Thumbnail Cache

Open the Power Menu by using the Windows Key + X Hotkey combination:

The important thing here is that you have an Administrator Command Prompt open as indicated in the above image. This won’t work otherwise.

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Command Prompt (Admin)

Three simple steps

• 1. Type taskkill /f /im explorer.exe and hit Enter

  2. Type del /f /s /q /a %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\thumbcache_*.db and hit Enter

  3. Type start explorer.exe and hit Enter

Don’t freak out if the first step causes your Taskbar, Wallpaper and Desktop icons to disappear. The third step will return things to normal.

The second step is where the magic happens. This command tells Windows to delete all the “thumbcache” files. By deleting them, Windows will be forced to rebuild them and this will give you a nice, clean slate. The next image will show you what to expect as you type in these commands:

img (click)

You will have noticed there are two entries marked “Access denied”. During this run I had a File Manager open and a browser that were probably using these files. If you run into this same problem, then close any programs that are using Thumbnails. It’s probably best to simply shut down all open programs during this exercise.