thumbnails slow

[hium]

Welcome everyone. This is something Ive been trying to figure out for awhile. Lets say I have 100 folders of photos under Pictures folder. When I open Explorer and select Pictures it takes forever to populate the thumbnails. I can wait until its finished, close explorer and reopen and it will take just as long to do it again. Why isnt it simply re caching them for instant viewing?

Another odd thing, if I right click in a folder and change the Sorting from Name to Date, it takes FOREVER to rebuild the thumbnails. Its as is Win7 is redoing the task for the first time, each time. I want this stuff instant.

Any thoughts on what I can check to speed this up. What a PITA.

It will also do this with as few as 25 program install files under Downloads. Takes forever.

Thanks

 

[evil c]

Hi,

Sounds like your thumbnail cache is disabled. Here's a link from this forum: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/10794-thumbnail-cache-enable-disable.html

 

[hium]

Hi,

Sounds like your thumbnail cache is disabled. Here's a link from this forum: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/10794-thumbnail-cache-enable-disable.html

Not sure if it was or not but applied it. I'm on a fresh clean install. So whatever the default was.

Problem persists. My actively used folders are set up to Sort by Date Modified. If I let the thumbs populate then leave the folder and come back to it, it takes forever to Sort by Date Modified again.

I'm thinking this issue is more related to the Sort function rather than simply populating thumbs.

 

[Gornot]

The more content, the more time you need to wait until Windows Explorer reads all the metadata+thumbs. Nothing wrong with that, according to what I've experienced with Win7.

 

[hium]

The more content, the more time you need to wait until Windows Explorer reads all the metadata+thumbs. Nothing wrong with that, according to what I've experienced with Win7.

Do you know a way to force 7 to remember the folder sorted by 'state' so when you leave the folder and come back to it - its how you left it? The folders seem to revert back to a default and forgets how you want it sorted. So it goes through that long process of sorting all over again. Its silly really.

To clarify... 7 remembers how you want it sorted, by Date Modified, for example, but has to perform the Sort each time you go back to the folder.

 

[evil c]

100 folders of photos, you must be a keen photographer! I might be talking rubbish here, if so I'm well sure someone will point that out to me. I have lots of photos as well, but what I do is store them on a separate USB drive. I don't know what program you use to view them but I use ACDsee, which creates its own thumbnail cache. All my photos load almost instantly. When you've modified your photos why don't you save them in a separate folder. What are you trying to do with them and also I guess it depends on the size of each photo, as Gornot says. Perhaps if the photos were resized down they would load faster?

 

[Ztruker]

It's the rendering of all the thumbnails that is causing it to be so slow. Sorting takes almost no time at all. To verify this, change the view to Details and you'll see what I mean.

It sure sounds like your thumbnail cache is disabled. Did you apply the Enable_Thumbnail_Cache.zip (unzipped and double clicked on the .reg file)?

 

[hium]

It's the rendering of all the thumbnails that is causing it to be so slow. Sorting takes almost no time at all. To verify this, change the view to Details and you'll see what I mean.

It sure sounds like your thumbnail cache is disabled. Did you apply the Enable_Thumbnail_Cache.zip (unzipped and double clicked on the .reg file)?

Yes I applied it. I was just trying something a minute ago. I went around and clicked all the main folders i use in the left pane of explorer to populate the thumbs in the right pane of explorer. I closed explorer. Opened it, and started clicking the same folders again. It had to repopulate the thumbs again. Its as if the cache isnt big enough??

I'm talking lots of photos, videos, documents etc. but each folder carries their own file ext. all videos in one video folder. Im on a clean install of windows. Have not gone and tweaked anything yet but the thumb cache as mentioned.

 

[hium]

100 folders of photos, you must be a keen photographer! I might be talking rubbish here, if so I'm well sure someone will point that out to me. I have lots of photos as well, but what I do is store them on a separate USB drive. I don't know what program you use to view them but I use ACDsee, which creates its own thumbnail cache. All my photos load almost instantly. When you've modified your photos why don't you save them in a separate folder. What are you trying to do with them and also I guess it depends on the size of each photo, as Gornot says. Perhaps if the photos were resized down they would load faster?

Yes. tons of photos. lots of family pics and vids plus I write and publish product reviews, tons of product testing. I have well over 100,000 photos in various folders. Years and years worth but Im just trying to work with a few recent works. Not so concerned about fetching archived stuff. The sole reason for buy the last 2 pc's for an upgrade was to try to get faster performance with folders in explorer. 1st pc was Vista now this i7 with 7. I think I had it made with XP in comparison on an old pc years ago.

I prefer not to use 3rd party but its looking like I might have to. Picasa loads all this stuff just fine but Im old school and stick with explorer most often. I miss XP style explorer.

I cant go resizing everything at this point, wouldnt want to anyway as I need originals often.

 

[evil c]

Jeez! 100,000 photos! I miss XP explorer too. Still, there's progress for you. MS knows better! The computers get faster and the OS gets bigger. I'm not a fan of Picasa myself. There's plenty of 3rd party progs out there. Ask your fellow reviewers what they use.

 

[Ztruker]

I just tried this with a folder thta has 370+ pictures in it (.jpg). First time I opened it and changed the view to large icons, it took about 45 seconds to populate. I closed out, started Windows Explorer again and this time when I looked at that folder, it populated in under 5 seconds.

How many pics are in one of the folders you see this problem happening?

 

[hium]

Ok Great news! No need for SSD or any other new hardware. Ive been pounding away at searching for a solution all day and found one.

UPDATE: Read my next post. This fix below has limitations.

Google Stop Prevent Windows 7 From Deleting Thumbnail Cache

Works excellent! The thumbs are instantly there when I select a folder like I remember it to be in XP. No more waiting for them to redraw. Its instant on my machine. Like BAM! instant. Wow what a relief that is.

I noticed looking at
C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
the thumbcache_96 file was only 2,736KB before the tweak, (that was after browsing tons of folders) now just browsing a few folders after the tweak its grown to 872,736KB and it continues to grow which is a good sign. I dont care if it grows to be 5 gig. It works.

 

[Ztruker]

Interesting find. I've made the change, will see what affects it has over time.

Glad you got it fixed and thank you for posting your fix. Here is the link to the article.

Stop/Prevent Windows 7 From Deleting Thumbnail Cache

 

[hium]

Its a bust@! I made a mistake.

The thumbcache_96 file is maxed at 449MB, then it starts making tmp files under a folder "ThumbCacheToDelete". I glanced at my thumbcache_1024 file which is over 2GB. I was looking at the wrong one. Thumbcache_1024 is made by Window Live Photo Gallery

There is no fix but it helped for 449MB of thumbs anyway. Hope MS fixes this incredible annoyance.

Im just going to leave it as is and see what happens over the next few days.

 

[Ztruker]

Ah well, sounded good. I'm guessing the four different thumbcache_nnn.db files represent thumbnails for those DPI values. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[evil c]

Hello again, I might have a solution for you, I've been searching for a fix to an annoying lag when I right click and this led me to Indexing Options. I was thinking that if Windows is having to index all your pics/vids, it may be slowing down the search. I could be wrong but what have you got to lose? It won't harm anything else if you try and you can always rebuild the Index if it fails. I remember stopping the indexing service on earlier Windows OS and this speeded things up no end!

Type 'in' in the Start search box and it will give you the link to Indexing Options. Click the Advanced button then click File Types tab. Scroll down the file types until you come to .jpg, (or any other file type that's causing you problems) then uncheck box and click OK. Also, you could try this instead/as well. Instead of clicking Advanced, click Modify. Then click the little triangle next to C:, in the drop down list, Users will probably be ticked. Click the little triangle again and find your personal folders, probably ticked. If you are storing all your pics in 'My Pictures', uncheck the box and click OK. This will stop Windows indexing this folder. When you go back to the Indexing Options window, the number of indexed locations will be less and My Pictures will be included in the Exclude list. There's all sorts of options you could try here, perhaps one will work?

Another idea is changing the processor resources to speed up background services.
Control Panel then System then click Advanced System Settings. In the System Properties window that opens, the Advanced tab will be displayed. Click the Performance, settings button, then in the Performance Options window, click the Advanced tab. Then in Processor Scheduling enable Background Services instead of Programs.

If any of this works you owe me a pint!

 

[overhear]

Solved this problem by removing photo programs

What worked for me was going to Remove Programs and uninstalling all of the old programs I wasn't using -- especially programs associated with image file types, like graphic design programs and picture organizers. After re-booting, all is well.