Windows 7: Image thumbnails fail to appear

Windows 7: Image thumbnails fail to appear

All right, I've got a pretty strange one here. Since I installed Windows 7 on this machine some time ago, image thumbnails have never worked properly. For the vast majority of images, they completely fail to show up, showing the icon of the default image viewing application instead. Please note that the “Always show icons, never thumbnails” option in folder options is not checked. I've taken a screenshot demonstrating the problem, here:

Asked by: Guest | Views: 261

Total answers/comments: 2

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Guest [Entry]

After weeks of fiddling I finally just gave up and reformatted the machine. Problem solved. I have all the same applications installed/configured as before, but the problem did not return. Still a mystery I guess. I wish I had a better solution, but the best I can do is the old fashioned fix-everything reformat and start over.

Guest [Entry]

"Thumbnail generation is initiated by explorer.exe, but applications can register themselves to create the thumbnail. An application simply has to implement http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb774614(VS.85).aspx as a COM object.

For instance, when you are installing the Combined Community Codec Pack you have the option of letting Haali (I believe this is the component) of taking over generation of thumbnails for video files. Thus thumbnail generation is the responsibility of Haali.

Search under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and you will see many thumbnail providers (for example XPS and Office Documents)."