Image thumbnails flashes and then disappears in Windows Vista

I have Windows Vista installed on my machine and I am facing this really annoying problem. Whenever I open a folder having images, image thumbnails appear for an instant and they are replaced by standard file icon. Argh...

Points to note:

Setting "Always show icon, never thumbnail" is unchecked
Running Windows Aero theme (with transparency support)
Have 4GB of RAM on my machine so memory is not a problem

Please can you suggest a solution?

Hemant

Posted 2009-08-31T07:08:09.763

Reputation: 1 390

I have the exact same problem and have not yet found a solution. Have not yet tried turning off shell extensions as suggested by Choy. I will say that some image thumbnails do occasionally display (maybe 2 out of 50), but it appears entirely random. – Ed Lucas – 2010-06-04T14:04:24.063

I had no thumbnail previews of images in Windows 7 and didn't know about the first bullet point, which fixed the issue for me. Sorry it's not working for you. – I Have the Hat – 2009-09-04T21:34:32.727

Answers

According to this site it is due to the archive-flag is set (the post is about network drives but maybe it's unrelated).

After unchecking this flag thumbnails work properly (tested)!

EDIT:
Does only work if images get the flag unchecked one by one. :/

David Rettenbacher

Posted 2009-08-31T07:08:09.763

Reputation: 191

You can clean up the disk, ensuring that thumbnails are included:
Right-click menu of hard disk, Properties, General tab, Disk Cleanup.

Some people report that uninstalling MS Publisher fixed the problem (if you have it installed).

harrymc

Posted 2009-08-31T07:08:09.763

Reputation: 306 093

I'm not familiar with Vista, but in Windows 7, as well as the "Always show icons, never thumbnails" check-box in 'Folder settings', there's also a "Show thumbnails instead of icons" check-box in 'Performance options' ('System properties > Advanced > Performance Settings' in Win 7).
Is this setting available in Vista also?

pelms

Posted 2009-08-31T07:08:09.763

Reputation: 8 283

Mine is checked. Still no joy. – Ed Lucas – 2010-06-04T14:03:09.367

1Yes and it is un-checked. Still no luck. :( – Hemant – 2009-09-21T05:29:19.073

Try running Autoruns (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx) and turning off all your Shell Extensions.

Zian Choy

Posted 2009-08-31T07:08:09.763

Reputation: 1 394

Make sure your hard disk is not full. I had 390MB left and Vista would not create the thumbs.db file until I freed up more disk space, then it worked.

user3232849

Posted 2009-08-31T07:08:09.763

Reputation: 1