How do I disable (video) thumbnails in Windows 7?

I'd like to turn off Windows 7 (video) thumbnails displayed in Explorer. I found this solution for Windows XP but it doesn't work for Windows 7 ("The module shmedia.dll failed to load").

Disable thumbnails in Windows XP?

Sam

Posted 2010-06-14T14:00:02.907

Reputation: 1 319

Answers

To disable video thumbnails only, download and run ShellExView (a great system tool from NirSoft). Disable the "MF XXX Property Handler" lines. Close and restart explorer windows. You are done :)

screenshot:

pierre67

Posted 2010-06-14T14:00:02.907

Reputation: 96

Thanks for the heads up on ShellExView. I used it to disable thumbnail preview for another file type (LibreOffice ods file) by disabling "<program name> Thumbnail Viewer" and restarting the explorer.exe process. – reflexiv – 2014-11-08T16:44:28.453

There are a couple of potential options.

Open Explorer/Tools/Folder options/View and check the first box Always show icons, never thumbnails
You can customize the way way each folder controls the display of the objects within. Right click on a folder and choose Properties then Customize In the drop down list for Optimize this folder for, select General items
Changing the View type will work too.

Pulse

Posted 2010-06-14T14:00:02.907

Reputation: 4 389

Hmm... I just tried this in Windows 7 and it didn't remove the thumbnails from the video files contained in the folder. – Dave – 2015-07-30T05:59:57.727

Thanks, the second option worked great (first option would remove other functionality I want to keep, image thumbnails). – Sam – 2010-06-16T14:33:32.570