Video Thumnails Have Gone Missing

[KaJuN]

This problem has me completely stumped. One day all my video thumbnails vanished and all I see now is a filmstrip icon with AVI or WMV at the bottom depending on which type of file it is. As you can imagine this makes browsing my vast collection of pornographic and non-pornographic media quite difficult with only filenames to go off of. This is happening in all folders and on my external drive. The photo thumbnails still show up just fine. All the fixes I've found via Google say to disable thumbnails then re-enable them. That turns the photo thumbnails into icons and back again, but the video thumbnails refuse to come back. Numerous virus/ware scans haven't helped. I'm on a HP laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate 32 if that helps.

As always any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Dr_Grip]

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/clear-thumbnail-cache-windows-7-vista/ This should help. Clear the cache, next time you open the folder, the thumbs should be re-generated.

 

[KaJuN]

Still broken.

 

[PacketCollision]

Try updating your video codecs. CCCP is a good choice.

 

[KaJuN]

That didn't work either. I've played around with setting different media players as the default and all that does is change the look of the video icon. I'm getting close to just doing a fresh install of Windows and being done with it.

 

[Dr_Grip]

There was a hardcore solution path that involved killing explorer.exe and deleting the thumbnail databases in the command line somewhere on google....

Here it is: http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/how-to-rebuild-the-icon-cache-in-windows-vista/

 

[KaJuN]

That refreshed all the photo icons but the video thumbnails are still missing. I guess it's time to start backing up to the external and prepping for a fresh install.

 

[Dr_Grip]

In this case you should -before reinstalling- switch your focus from the thumbnail database to the video codecs available to the system, as PC suggested. Do the files play in Windows Media Player (NOT VLC or MPC, WMP)?

 

[KaJuN]

The files play just fine in WMP. The video thumbnails are showing up in the actual Videos folder but when I try to copy to or from that folder the thumbnail then becomes an icon. I tried optimizing the folders for videos under the preferences menu but that doesn't see to do anything other than rearrange them a little. I've also tried a couple different codec packs with no luck.

 

[Dr_Grip]

Is there a "View---> Thumbnails" you might have not checked?

 

[KaJuN]

The other fixes I found on Google described about three different ways of enabling thumbnails and I tried them all. If I had forgotten one then the photo thumbnails would be gone as well but they're working just fine so it has something to do with how the computer is seeing the video files.

 

[Dr_Grip]

I'll give up, just reinstall, it does not make any sense to look for the error any longer, a reinstall will be quicker.

 

[KaJuN]

Agreed. I reinstalled Windows and the thumbnails are working perfectly now. Thanks a lot for the tips anyway.