How to Fix Problems with Thumbnails on Windows 10
What Are Thumbnails Anyway?
By default, instead of just using generic icons for your documents, Windows 10 would create small pictures of image or document contents known as thumbnails. These tiny images are stored in a special database file known as the thumbnail cache. Thanks to this file, Windows would not have to recreate thumbnail images every time that you open up a folder.
If you are seeing garbled or incorrect thumbnails, it is very likely that the thumbnails that are stored in the cache for those particular files have been corrupted or are currently missing. This could be due to a bug found in Windows or maybe an intermittent hardware problem.
In that case, the best immediate course of action is to permanently delete your thumbnail cache which does not in any way affect your personal data and it would allow Windows to recreate the faulty thumbnails from scratch the next time that you restart your machine. Here is how to do it.
How to Clear the Thumbnail Cache in Windows 10
First of all, open up the “Start” menu and search for “Disk Cleanup.” Click on the “Disk Cleanup” application that comes up.
In the Disk Cleanup window, look for the list tagged “Files To Delete”. This list would come in several different types of stored data that Windows 10 can safely delete to clean up space.
If you don’t want to delete anything but just thumbnails, uncheck any items (such as the “Downloaded Program Files” and the “Temporary Internet Files” at the top of the list).
Scroll down the list tagged “Files To Delete” and check the box that is beside “Thumbnails.” Click on “OK” to delete all the selected data from your system.
A pop-up dialog box would come up saying, “Are you sure you want to permanently delete all those files?” Click on “Delete Files.”
Another pop-up would come up, this time it would show you the current progress of deleting the thumbnails on your Windows PC
After the thumbnail cache files have been totally removed, restart your PC.
Now, open up the File Explorer window or lookup for the Desktop to see if the above has fixed your problem. Hopefully, the thumbnails have been recreated and are now very correct. If not, there might be a problem with the file on its own. Open up the file in the program that is associated and see if it actually matches the currently faulty thumbnail Windows that was created. If they match, then you have found your problem.
How to Disable Thumbnails Completely
Optionally, if you find out that Windows 10 thumbnails does not properly work or have started to become a nuisance, you can turn them off completely. Here’s how to do it.
Open up the windows “Start” menu and search for “File Explorer Options.” Click on the first result that comes up. (You can also launch these options in your File Explorer by clicking on the View > Options that is in the menu bar.)
In the File Explorer Options window, click on the “View” tab. In the windows “Advanced Settings” list, put a checkmark that is beside “Always show icons, never thumbnails.” Then, click “OK.”
After that, Windows will only display standard icons for documents instead of thumbnails. Sit back and enjoy your new and streamlined computing experience.
