Windows 7 not showing all Thumbnails + green bar

Hi,
It's going on 3 weeks now, 4 by this weekend, that I lost all my thumbnails.
I have searched this group and followed every step I can think of and I still am unable to fix it.
It all started when I had to compress a video with VLC. I have gone back, uninstalled it.
Rebooted, restored, scanned for virus, malware, etc and nothing.
I also have that never ending green bar at the top of the address that keeps going till almost the end but doesn't stop. I have even left it running overnight, right through the next day, a full 24 hours.
I do not want to reinstall.
I have run out of ideas, tricks, tweaks.
I would really need any help possible

Thank you!!!

Welcome to the Forum.

The green bar is on top of file explorer or desktop?
Can you please take a snapshot to show us what are you seeing?
Go to the page you see the green barand expand it. Launch the snipping tool and take a snapshot of the whole window and save the image.
Here, on the answer box you find a paper clip. On the window, browse to the file - upload. It will put the image below the text you have written.

I hope this works, it's my first time in a forum.
I have attached 2 screen shots taken just now.
One is what I see when I open explorer.
The other, I had to do the green bar with a marker to simulate, but that is what I get, it goes to the "refresh" symbol and jams there. It's as if its searching and searching for I don't know what.
I have left it run for 24 hours and the green bar never turns off.

I do not know how to turn off windows search?

Thanks for the tip, I turned it off but now I have something else, besides the no thumbnails.
On the left side, where I circled, its continuous magnifying glasses looping in circles over those folders.

Update on the green bar, it's back as it was, trying to load non stop, 2 days now.
Still no thumbnails
even folder icons are gone.

In regards to the thumbnail problem, I suggest going to Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Select the C: drive. When it first runs and tells you how much disk space it can recover, check the box for Thumbnails. Let it run and select Ok to delete files. After it's finished, reboot. It should repopulate the thumbnails.