how do you disable windows 7 home from caching thumbs.db with keeping the "preview" on?
I have done acouple reg edits that have not helped me. I dont want my system clogged with useless thumbs. please tell me the secret in doing this in windows 7 home. seeing theres no gpedit in home, i cant figure it out. thanks ahead
As you indicated, Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) is the tool needed to disable thumbnail caching which by default is enabled. Unfortunately Group Policy exists only
in Professional and higher editions (Enterprise and Ultimate).
Saying that, it is not doom and gloom because gpedit is missing -- use
Disk Cleanup (click
Start and type in
cleanmgr.exe) to remove thumbnail caches accumulated over time, which is a recommended approach even if you have access to
gpedit.
Note that it is not advisable to disable thumbnail image caching; as you navigate into image folders without thumbnail caching it would take a long time to list files which otherwise would be reading tiny thumbnail images from thumbs.db -- a 'tiny database'
file. In effect, thumbs.db accelerates image file listing when thumbnail view is active.
General Advice: Leave thumbnail caching as is, but use Disk Cleanup from time to time.
Just as an aside, you can select almost all 'Files to delete' shown in Disk Cleanup but, if you have a Microsoft Office application installed, better avoid deleting
the Office Setup Files unless you're 100% sure what you're doing.
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