Thumbnail Cache - Enable or Disable

ooo · 19 Feb 2014

I've had to go the way terry said to stop this. Only way that stooped images being added to the cache. Used this progam here to see the cache. Thumbnail cache in Windows 7 / Vista ? a rumination | DmitryBrant.com

Britton30 · 19 Feb 2014

Cool, at the end of Dmitry Brant's article he provides a link to this tutorial on how to disables caching.

sd7paul · 27 Feb 2014

Brink said:

Ok fellas, I've updated the .reg file in step 2 OPTION ONE to see if that may help more.

I just love it when a group policy doesn't do completely what it claims anymore.

I tried the latest .reg file and it has no impact on Win7 Home Premium 32-bit - cleared out explorer thumbnail cache with Windows Disk Cleanup utility before adding thumbnail-disable registry entries and then rebooted, then cache continues to be rebuilt as directories are browsed. Editing / rotating an image still leaves explorer thumbnails out of sync with image.

I will be going with terry60's approach (thanks for the info!):

terry60 said:

Did you read on down the thread ?
In post #6 I mentioned the only thing that actually works.
Ignore all the subsequent stuff about the cats, turns out that that was just embedded metadata and nothing to do with caching at all.
Setting group policy etc. has no effect whatsoever, so why MS provides such policy settings when they do nothing is a major question.
Turns out, the only way to prevent W7 (and W8) from cluttering your valuable SSD C drive space with unwanted junk in the form of thumbnails, is to navigate down to ...Users/yourname/appdata/local/Microsoft/Windows/Explorer
right click on that folder, select properties> security and remove all access to it.
Leave it so that only you (not the system) have access and remove your own ability to write inside it.
Just leave yourself with ownership and read access.

Make sure you do a disk cleanup first, or what's inside the cache will be stuck there forever wasting space.

tecknomage · 16 May 2016

I have Win7 Pro SP1 64bit

NEITHER of the Options in post worked, IconCache.db is rebuilt EVERY time I boot

I even verified the Registry entries after using Option One.

I use Local Policy Editor and set to disable icon cache (enable settings in policy).

Something in your post is missing.

Brink · 16 May 2016

tecknomage said:

I have Win7 Pro SP1 64bit

NEITHER of the Options in post worked, IconCache.db is rebuilt EVERY time I boot

I even verified the Registry entries after using Option One.

I use Local Policy Editor and set to disable icon cache (enable settings in policy).

Something in your post is missing.

Hello tecknomage, :)

This only disables the thumbnail cache thumbs_*.db database files stored at the hidden system folder below.

C:\Users\User-Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

terry60 · 16 May 2016

tecknomage said:

I have Win7 Pro SP1 64bit

NEITHER of the Options in post worked, IconCache.db is rebuilt EVERY time I boot

I even verified the Registry entries after using Option One.

I use Local Policy Editor and set to disable icon cache (enable settings in policy).

Something in your post is missing.

Check post #16
That's the only way to kill thumbnail caching in W7/8/8.1/10
The GPE and regedit methods should work in theory, but demonstrably don't do what they claim.

STU9000 · 22 Sep 2017

I just ran the disable program in Option 1 to get rid of thumbs.db files because I was trying to sync all my backup folders and it was making it really difficult when file counts weren't exactly matching because of hidden thumbs.db folders.

Now I just tried to turn it back on using the enable program because I need to be able to see thumbnails of my photography but it didn't work.

Help.

EDIT

I just ran Option 3.2 on this link

Thumbnail Previews - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Help Forums

and that has fixed the problem.

If anyone can elucidate further as to which of all these options is the best to use if I want to turn this feature on and off as required then please let me know.

Brink · 22 Sep 2017

Hello Stu, :)

All three options in that tutorial set the same setting. The only difference is Option 3 (all users steps) and Option 4 get applied to all users and override Options 1 and 2.

STU9000 · 22 Sep 2017

Think I might just keep is on enabled thumbs.db files. Really slowing my computer down reestablishing this, which I need for my photography. Just need to remember to keep all my backup folders in order and tidy from now on...

TBugReporter · 14 Apr 2022

@Brink: While reviewing some of my favorite Registry tweaks for a new computer, I just found that I "do not have permission to access" the "Enable_Thumbnail_Cache.reg" file linked at the top of this page. (Not that I'll ever have reason to use that file; I just wanted to keep a copy on hand for completeness.)