OT: Windows icons and thumbnails messed up

smashguy37 wrote on 10/26/2008, 8:06 PM
I just re-installed Windows XP after my hard drive died on me and I have a lot of folders with pictures in them (i.e. October 2008, etc.) and whenever I open one of them up, Windows is slow, prone to crashing and the thumbnails are displayed smalled and the colour looks like it's extremely low res. However, when I click on the pictures, they open up fine. If I go to properties and change it to "picture (best for many files)", the thumbnails suddenly go back to proper size, but half of them are still small and low res looking and the overall usage of the folders is slow.

I have a Geforce 9600 GT card with the latest drivers, everything is working fine, I've defragged my files and nothing seems to help. Are there some settings I'm missing somewhere? There is nothing in the Nvidia control panel that stick out either.

This is driving me nuts. We just got a good still camera too and it's making me go nuts trying to upload pictures. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Comments

Steve Mann wrote on 10/26/2008, 9:47 PM
Try rebuilding the icon cache. Rename the IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually /Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data) to OldIconCache.db.

IconCache.db will be automatically recreated when you restart Windows and you can delete the OldIconCache.db.

smashguy37 wrote on 10/27/2008, 12:22 AM
Oddly enough, I can't locate those folders. I always used to see them, but for some reason I just don't have a Local Settings or Application Data folder. I did some more searching on rebuilding my icons and tried using TweakUI, but it didn't do anything.

I also want to mention that a lot of icons have that same icon that you get when your computer doesn't know what file type a file is. Some picture files get this, then sometimes switch to the small low res thumbnail.
ritsmer wrote on 10/27/2008, 2:18 AM
1) if you have not tried it you can do CTRL+A and then right click and click Refresh Thumbnails.
2) have you clicked "Show hidden files and folders" under Folder options and View?
3) Maybe some file types are not registered to a program - can be done in the programs or under Folder Options and File types.
smashguy37 wrote on 10/27/2008, 8:56 AM
Hmm, nothing has worked on it yet. Man this is confusing.


UPDATE: scratch that, I think I may have solved it. I right clicked a picture and it had a tab in properties called "Photoshop image" or something like that, and it had a checkbox called "generate photoshop thumbnail" and I turned it off and it automatically affected all my other pictures and now they load up fine. Phew.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, appreciate it.