Search this blog

Sunday, July 13, 2008

How To Enable or Disable Thumbs.db In Windows

Thumbs.db is a database file which stores the thumbnails of all pictures and videos in a folder so that Windows doesn’t have to create the thumbnails every time the folder is opened. I don’t use the thumbnails view most of the time as I’m not dealing with pictures all the time. So I prefer to turn off this feature so that it may save me some processing time and hard drive space. Here are the two methods by which you can disable Thumbs.db file in Windows.

Method 1: Using Control Panel

To disable Thumbs.db, go to Start –> Control Panel –> Folder Options –> View

Check “Do not cache thumbnails”

folder Options

Method 2: Through Group Policy

To disable or enable thumbnails.db through group policy, do the following:

Go to Start –> Run –> gpedit.msc

Group policy editor will open. Now go to the following in the left hand pane:

User Configuration –> Administrative templates –> Windows Components –> Windows Explorer

In the right hand pane, double click “Turn off caching of thumbnail pictures

Enable or disable it appropriately

DisableThumbnailsGpedit

Please note that group policy may take some time to be applied correctly. If you want to forcibly apply the changes you’ve made immediately, please do the following:

Go to Start –> Run –> gpupdate /force

No comments: