I have, like many of us, thousands of images, and when I explore the folders containing the images, I find myself waiting for the computer to finish drawing thumbnails of each image to display in the file list. Even if I choose "list" as the display option, the computer is STILL drawing the damn thumbnails and using up CPU cycles doing it, even though it's only displaying the Photoshop icon next to each filename. I can tell because it goes along slowly displacing the default icon with the photoshop icon, one file at a time, and there is a lot of disk drive noise for each displacement, exactly as when it draws thumbnails. And if I switch to an actual thumbnail view, they appear instantly, already drawn.

I want to give Windows Explorer a global command to stop drawing thumbnails of graphic files. I know what they are by their names and folders, and I don't need to look at each one in WinExplorer.. I do my "looking" in PS..

does anyone by any chance know how to tell WinExplorer not to bother drawing thumbs?

I've consulted many experts (today even a Geeks On Call guy) and nobody ever heard of such a command. I'm hoping this forum will come through for me.

Thanks

IF you let it run through the first time, does it not generate it's Thumbs.DB file and then not need to regenerate them the next time you view that directory?

in explorer... goto Tools... Folder Options... View... check "Do Not Cache thumbnails"
Then click on "apply to all folders"

Dave, for some reason there is a time issue.. if I go a week or a month or whatever without looking at a folder, then when I go back to it the folder begins redrawing all the thumbnails. It's not an issue if it's the second time I look at a folder in the same day, but at some point the thumbs db is gone.

PUllTab, I did what you said and then opened some old folders I haven't looked at in a while... and the thumbnail drawing commenced.. so I reversed that procedure, went to another folder that I haven't looked at in a while, and the thumbnail drawing commenced again..

I don't need to tell the computer not to cache thumbs, I want to tell it not to DRAW them at all... but I haven't yet found the way to do it.

Thanks for looking, anyone know this one?

I think it's a feature of the media enabled Windows operating system.

In their infinite wisdom, our friends at Microsoft must not have fathomed that this could be perceived as an annoyance.

Kind of interesting how little itty bitty apps like cPicture.exe can generate thumbs and display a whole stinkin' directory worth lightening quick.

Here's another thought ... if that Thumbs.DB just expires after a certain amount of time perhaps there's a utility one can find that just regenerates those files in advance, or updates the timestamp to encourage them to be still considered fresh.

It's slightly hackish, although less so than a registry edit. Here it is:

To disable thumbnails (they will never generate):

Start->Run: "regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll"

If you decide later you want it back:

Start->Run: "regsvr32 shimgvw.dll"

Brian,

it doesn't work. The computer seems to accept the command ok, but the folders are still generating thumbs.

Windows oppresses me with its helpfulness. :-((

Hey Tempo, I think for most people this thing isn't annoying... but I have thousands of image files. If I happen to click on a folder with a hundred images in it (even accidentally), I have to wait for the thumbs to draw before I can move on. If I try to interrupt the drawing, WinExplorer will sometimes seize on me and it's a mini-crash...

if it's only 10 images, no prob.. even while they're drawing, I can interrupt and move along to the next folder.. but a hundred images and explorer is at risk during the drawing process... not to mention it steals cycles from the CPU that I might want to be using for something else..

I've got a gig of ram with an Athlon 1.8. Seems like more than enough machine so that this minicrash thing shouldn't be happning. and I don't want to be forced to break up my image folders into ten files each, that's too much forced re-organization.

So I"m still seeking the grail, the command that tells windows not to bother drawing the thumbs.

With shimgvw.dll unregistered, Windows is no longer generating the thumbnails, so it's possible that it never was. Do you have any other "helpful" image apps that might have taken over the thumbnail job? Maybe a plugin or tool that allows raw thumbnails? There's a way to check who might be doing this using the registry editor, but I don't know the key offhand so I'll have to go look it up.

For paranoia sake just in case it still is Windows making the thumbnails, you could go into c:\windows\system32 (or c:\winnt, whatever your windows folder is called) and rename the file shimgvw.dll to shimgvw.dll.bak or similar. It's the only windows dll that adds those image functions (thumbnails as well as slideshow view, rotate, print, etc all from explorer) so without it windows would have to be using a different program to do those tasks, if at all. I've checked on a couple of machines around my lab and on a fresh install, the unregister trick works.

Amazing...

the unregister trick is working after all..

I had referenced some image folders which had thumbs.db in them, and therefore were displaying the thumbs when I looked at the folders. I mistook this for (very rapid) drawing of the thumbs...

but I have found some folders which I have not looked at in years, and in those folders the thumbs are NOT generating..

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou..

:-)