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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
April 6,
2008
Q.
I have found several files on my computer
called thumbs.db. When I delete them they
keep coming back. What are they, do I need
them, and how can I get rid of them?
A.
Thumbs.db are hidden files that are not
visible by default. You have to have your
computer set to display hidden files before
you will be able to see them. When Windows
XP or Vista is installed, some files are
hidden by default. Microsoft has its reasons
for doing this and for the novice, it may be
a good idea. But for those that want to see
what is really on their computer, displaying
the hidden and system files is important.
So, for those that don't already know,
here's how to display all the files on your
computer.
Click My
Computer, just Computer in Vista, and then
Click Tools, Options and the View tab. Find
and check "Show hidden files and folders".
While there, if you don't already have it
done, I would suggest that you choose to not
hide known "known" extensions and possibly
to not hide system files. By known,
Microsoft means known to the operating
system, not to the user. Microsoft hides
these system files to make it harder to
change or delete them. When you unhide the
system files you will be given what I call a
"scare" warning, but just click Yes that you
are sure you want to do this.
Now that
all the thumbs.db files are visible, what
are they? Windows XP operating system uses
these files to store or cache thumbnails of
picture that are displayed as thumbnails in
Explorer's thumbnail view. A different
Thumbs.db file is saved in each folder that
contains pictures or movies.
Thumbnails of graphics files in the
Thumbs.db file include the following
formats; JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIF, PDF, PNG and
HTML. Each thumbnail created in a directory
is represented in this database file as a
small JPEG file, regardless of the file's
original format. Every folder that has
thumbnails view initiated, that is where
they display the Thumbnails or Filmstrip
view in Windows Explorer, will have a
Thumbs.db file.
Windows
XP Media Center Edition goes a little
further and creates a file called
ehthumbs.db which holds previews of video
files.
These
thumbs.db caches are supposed to make the
display of the picture thumbnails faster
since they are already in the cache. Just
how much this extra file does to speed
things up will depend on the computer and
number of pictures in any given folder. I
have found that for all practical purposes,
they can be deleted and little if any
performance hit will be experienced.
To keep
the thumbs,db file from being created in XP,
click My Computer, Tools, Folder Options,
then the View tab. Find and check the box in
front of "Do not cache thumbnails". After
that, if you delete one of these thumbs.db
files it will not be re-created by the
system.
Starting
with Windows Vista, there are no thumbs.db
files created in each folder. Vista stores
or caches iots graphic thumbnails in a
centralized location at C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
with a name like thumbcache_xxx.db (where
the xxx are numbers 1-999). These special
files are protected and cannot be easily
deleted nor is there a way to prevent them
from being created. But since they are
centralized, and out of the normal folder,
they should not be as much of a nuisance as
they can be in XP. |
