No more thumbnails on mp4 shortcuts

frederic · 12 Mar 2010

Hi,

In order to provide an easy access for my child to his videos, i've created a folder directly on desktop containing only shortcut files.

Since few days i experience the following problem : all thumbnails on shortcuts to mp4 files have disappeared. This concerns only shortcuts associated to mp4 files (shortcuts to .avi or .wmv files are not affected).
Surprising, the original .mp4 files are not affected as windows explorer shows thumbnails for them.

I have checked the program association for each shortcut and it seems good : "right click" , "properties" shows that WindowMediaPlayer is the default program. But, on the other hand and contrary to the others video files, there's no little orange triangle on the bottom right corner of these shortcuts (see attached screenshot).

I don't understand anything. Does somebody know how to repair this display problem ? Thanks for attention.

Brink · 12 Mar 2010

Hello Frederic, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Do they play when you double click on these MP4 files?

You might see if using the MP4 download in the tutorial below may be able to help fix this. It restores all of the default associations and settings for MP4 file extension types.

Default File Type Associations - Restore

Hope this helps,
Shawn

frederic · 13 Mar 2010

Hello Brink, many thanks for reply.

I've tried the Default File Type Associations - Restore for .mp4 and .lnk but this didn't fix the problem.

However you showed me the right way (that means the registery database) and now this problem is fixed.

In HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and with a lot of patience, I've noted all keys and values associated to video file types which were not affected by this problem (I performed it with . avi and .wmv types). I've noticed that registery inputs are the same for this 2 kinds of files (see attached Reg_AVI and Reg_WMV documents).

No more thumbnails on mp4 shortcuts-reg_avi.jpg

No more thumbnails on mp4 shortcuts-reg_wmv.jpg

Doing the same with .mp4 extension it was easy to highlight some differences (see attached Reg_MP4 document).

No more thumbnails on mp4 shortcuts-reg_mp4.jpg

These differences make me think my problem was due to a bad Quicktime installing or unistalling, putting some trouble in the .mp4 key, that's why, I think, windows (via control panel) was enable to correctly manage shortcuts to .mp4 files (even if these files were correctly played in media player).

After having manually replaced keys and values on the basis of .avi type, problem was solved

I hope this post could be useful to someone.

Dwarf · 13 Mar 2010

Thanks for reporting back on your problem. I'm glad that you have managed to solve it, and the information you posted regarding this will prove to be useful for others who find themselves with the same dilemna.

Brink · 14 Mar 2010

That's great news Frederic. Thank you for posting back with your results and solution. :)

Threethumb · 24 Apr 2010

I partly got this, but I'm afraid of screwing up my system by messing with the wrong register files. Could someone simplify the solution for me so I too can get back the thumbnails for .mp4 files?

Threethumb · 07 May 2010

I guess not.

Brink · 07 May 2010

Hello Threethumb, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You could do a system restore using a restore point dated before you had this issue to hopefully fix it instead.

Hope this helps some,
Shawn

mistamontiel · 22 Sep 2011

Also have this problem. I don't have thumbnails anymore, for .mp4 nor .flv (not shortcuts)

I looked at the pics frederic provided, but I cannot find those charts he is seeing.

I am just looking in regedit. Searching HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for "mp4" but very lost as to where he got to and how to safely restore this. Media Player Classic is my player

mistamontiel · 24 Sep 2011

Can someone please provide some advice ?