Thumbnail Cache - Enable or Disable

I did think about the metadata as a source, and checked in properties>details but that's no help.
You prompted me to search for a better metadata tool and ExifTool would suggest that there is an embedded thumbnail.
However I'm not fully convinced that that is the source in Explorer for a reason I didn't detail before.
If you drag the scale up or down in the X-Large/Large/Medium/Small/List/Details/Tiles/Content dropdown, the upside-down, negative image suddenly becomes OK, then flips back, suggesting that more than one thumbnail exists at different scales, in exactly the way that explorer saves different sizes in its multiple dbs.
There's no indication in the exif that multiple thumbnails are embedded, but I'm going to look more deeply and I'll copy it back into the camera and see whether the Olympus firmware sees it wrong.

Astounding Matter,

I was looking for a solution for an user that posted a problem in an other forum where a user was having a problem with a *.mp4 video file were instead of the video preview thumbnail there was exibited a thumbnail of the DVD cover of that movie.

I must say that when I looked into your problem I got amazed. I didn't even know that windows looks in metadata to exhibit thumbnails.

Have you tried right clicking the file, Proprieties, Details tab and remove personal information to see what happens?

I have found that Paint.NET will refresh the metadata thumbnail and align it with the actual image.
Just open/save without even making changes is sufficient.
Not sure what the situation is with movie files.

I tried this tutorial but unfortunately no luck for me. Despite disabling the thumbnail cache as per the instructions and deleting the thumbnail files from the drive, new thumbnail files are created the instant that I select a thumbnail view mode in explorer.

Originally I suspected this might be due to the fact that I use Directory Opus as my file manager, not Windows Explorer (because Windows Explorer sucks). But even when I explicitly use Windows explorer to preview folder contents in thumbnail mode, the thumbnail .db files are recreated.

terry60 said:

Did you read on down the thread ?
In post #6 I mentioned the only thing that actually works.

Hello Terry.

Yes I did see your posts about preventing system access to the thumbnails folder. I accept this method as a potential solution. I guess I was still a bit confused as to why the original tutorial method doesn't work - I assume the author will have tested it and confirmed it to be working for him/her?

Anyway I agree - your method achieves what I want. Thanks for the input!

:)

I don't know if the author was just helpfully publishing the theoretical method or passing on practical experience.
I suspect the former, since my personal experience on Windows 7 and 8 on two PCs, is that though the GPE is quite unequivocal - "Turn off caching......", whoever coded explorer clearly doesn't consult that resource, since it demonstrably has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the caching behaviour implemented.
I imagine that there must be a fair number of PCs out there whose installers imagine them to be safe, but are actually replete with confidential images just waiting to be exploited by financially motivated end-users.

Yes indeed. I agree with your points and would echo your concerns about misguided impressions of privacy. You would hope that people will test the results of changing the group policies before relying upon it. Skepticism is our friend here

Cheers,

Brian