Thread: Manage thumbnails

Thumbnails are a good way to view your image files, but of little use otherwise. So make sure they're not turned on in folders where you don't need them. You might also like to check that you have thumbnail caching enabled. In Windows XP Explorer, go to Tools, Folder Options, View and make sure that 'Do not cache thumbnails' is not ticked. If thumbnails aren't cached, then they need to be regenerated each time a folder is viewed as thumbnails. This takes time and is especially noticeable when 'folder pictures' (showing four sub-thumbnails of the folder contents) is also enabled. Unlike XP, Vista caches thumbnails centrally, rather than in per-folder thumbs.db files. You can turn off thumbnails completely, from Folder Options, but you can't disable caching. You can clear the thumbnail cache in Vista, but this is only really necessary if thumbnails are damaged.