Solved No more thumbnails on mp4 shortcuts

[frederic]

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]

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.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19449-default-file-type-associations-restore.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[frederic]

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).


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

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]

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]

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

 

[Threethumb]

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]

I guess not.

 

[Brink]

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]

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]

Can someone please provide some advice ?

 

[Brink]

Hello Mista,

Please go ahead and create a new thread instead since your issue may not be exactly the same as the one in this older thread.

 

[wildmatch]

another way is to.....

I found myself on this forum because I had exactly the same problem after an update to live essentials 12. I followed the advice and like other people I could not get the screen shots of the regedit files but I discovered another way. google media previewer and this will change the default icons back to thumnails.
found lots of ways to improve these too by putting the picture of the film on the front like a dvd case thanks to aksz on here

 

[iski0s]

Excuse the necropost but these are step by step instructions for how to fix this as I had the same problem after a Windows Update.


First, go to Start and type regedit to open the Registry Editor.
Then click the arrow next to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to open it and scroll down until you see the .avi folder (which is actually a registry key). Click on that arrow to open it too.
You should see several keys, including one named PersistentHandler and shellex. First, click on PersistentHandler and you'll see in the pane on the right that under Data it has one String Value. Under Name, right click that String Value (for me, it was named (Default)) and then Modify and copy the Value Data (BUT DON'T CHANGE IT) and paste it to Notepad under PH for PersistentHandler.

For me, the Value Data was {098f2470-bae0-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb} but yours might be different.
Now go to shellex and click the arrow next to it to open it. You should see three more keys that are named:
{00021500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
{BB2E617C-0920-11D1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}
{e357fccd-a995-4576-b01f-234630154e96}
You need to click each key to show its string value in the pane on the right and copy the value data for each string value and save them to NotePad like you did with PersistentHandler.

Now scroll down to the .mp4 key and open it, then open shellex too to show all its keys. Right away, you should see that several keys (and/or their string values) that .avi had are missing from .mp4. You need to recreate whatever's missing.
So, right click on .mp4, go to New, then Key. Type in PersistentHandler, then right click the String Value, then Modify and copy/paste the value data under PH that you saved to Notepad. And that's it, you've recreated that missing key and string value. Now do the same for the missing ones under shellex, then close the registry editor and that should fix the problem.


Now you either have to restart your computer or restart Windows Explorer. To restart explorer, open Notepad again, then copy this to Notepad and save it as a batch file by giving the saved text file the extension .bat instead of .txt:


taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe


Now, double-click the .bat file and wait a few seconds, then check to see if your thumbnails have returned for your mp4 videos. And that should fix it! (It did for me.)


Credit to frederic from earlier in this thread for pointing me in the right direction, namely to the registry, though his instructions were somewhat confusing (seems to be French, so not a native English speaker?) And also to whoever originally shared that restart explorer batch file (was it on these forums?), I've been using it for years to reclaim memory whenever I've had to close down my browser and other running programs because my computer was slowing down--like restarting it without having to actually reboot it. Been very useful.