Concerning Windows XP: Doing a SEARCH for images (*.jpg, *.bmp, ...) and switching to thumbnail-view does only TEMPORARILY generate those thumbnails: NO thumbs.db file(s) get generated and stored!
But recently I found out a special trick that can be used for an automatization procedure (e.g. command batch-file): If you first copy a (wrong) dummy thumbs.db-file into a folder and open that directory with windows explorer in thumbnail-view, you now DON´T HAVE TO SCROLL through the directory any more to get all thumbs generated!
Certainly it will take some time, especially in huge image-folders, until your (slow) single-core PC finishes the generation of the thumbs.db file. When it´s generated, or doesn´t grow in size any more, you can recursively traverse to the next directory in your batch-file.
What "thumbnails" option are you refrencing here? Is this a pre-Windows 10 thing? because I am not seeing it. – Braden Dodge – 2019-07-29T22:59:00.683
Well, it was 2009 so yes, very pre-Windows 10! In W10 anything bigger than "small icons" should enable the thumbnails view. – MM. – 2019-08-02T10:01:53.663
Oh, nice trick. will have to try that out, hehe. Thanks! Will accept this as answer, since there haven't really been any other suggestions. and I kind of doubt there are any... – Svish – 2009-08-21T22:01:29.427
3I’m pretty sure you still have to scroll through the whole list. – Synetech – 2013-12-15T06:15:58.297