An educated guess- but are the missing thumbnails stored on a network share?

“this folder, which contains hundreds of images”

Maybe complete wrong here, but the number of files in the program might be the problem.

I would try rearranging it in some meaningful way and see if the problem persists.

On the Windows 7 RC there was a bug that stopped you deleting a folder than contained images as the file ‘thumbs.db’ was still in use. No longer an issue now, but could this be a side-effect of the fix?

Thanks for the comments. I’ll give some of the ideas a try and report back.

Barry

I remember when images used to disappear / re-appear in MS Word. The solution to that was to turn down the hardware acceleration in the Graphics Settings a notch or two until the issue stopped. Might help.

One thing that comes to mind is any “clean up” utilities you have installed which often have options to remove thumbnails etc.

The article reads as if the problem only happens on this one folder, which would point to a corruption of some kind. Have you tried to copy the folder to another location outside the My Pictures group, e.g. copy it to the root of the local hard drive. Then check the new folder to see if the problem occurs there. If not, delete the original and move the copied version back. If the problem still persists in the copied folder, then I think you are looking at recreating the folder from scratch by setting up a new folder and copying images in smallish groups, checking after each copy to try to nail the cause of the corruption.
Of course if the problem happens in more than one pictures folder you might have a corrupted user account. Try setting up a new user account to see if that cures the problem.

Hi,

I’ve had the same problem, but not just one folder. Everywhere random previews just disappeared in image folder, and not only that, windows image viewer itself didn’t even work at all!

Very long and annoying story short, i might’ve found the problem ! Do you use the COMODO firewall by any chance ? If so; try fully disabling the Defence+ security level (right click the icon). And (here at least) all the problems i had were magically solved !

………hmm

Anyway hope it works, because i’ve felt the frustration too.

Now on to see how i can turn it back on without messing up windows..

I have either the same problem or a similar one which turned out to be due to the windows deleting its own cache like crazy, forcing thumbnails to be rebuilt pretty much all the time.

Finally found the solution here, thank God:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/9878f7db-57ff-409e-ac04-d7d678d2b629

there is in windows 7 an process dllhost named COM Surrogates, enter task manager to end that process than refresh and your thumbnails should work

I had this same problem too, on every image folder. I went to the ‘Organize’ menu in windows explorer, then ‘Folder and Search Options’. Under the ‘View’ tab uncheck “Display file icon on thumbnails”. Seems to have solved my issue. Also uncheck the “Always show icons, never thumbnails” box.

Thanks maurice, that comodo tip worked

I have either the same problem or a similar one which turned out to be due to the windows deleting its own cache like crazy, forcing thumbnails to be rebuilt pretty much all the time.

Cheers Bob, that worked for me.

Finally found the solution here, thank God:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/9878f7db-57ff-409e-ac04-d7d678d2b629

Read more: Why do my Windows 7 thumbnails keep disappearing? | PC Pro blog http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/03/26/why-do-my-windows-7-thumbnails-keep-disappearing/#ixzz1vuwqAmvY

I agree with Stu (Entry #26), Gareth (Entry #16) is my newest hero! Been mad every time I’ve tried to look for a picture these last few months. FINALLY! :0)