Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on November 09, 2006 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

If you have your computer set to show hidden files and folders then you may have noticed a Thumbs.db file located on your computer. You can delete it and no damage will be done, but it will probably just reappear. The Thumbs.db file is used to cache the thumbnails of the images located in that particular directory. If the thumbnails are cached they should be able to display themselves a little quicker, but I don’t even notice a speed difference if I disable this feature.

It is a really easy to disable the thumbnail caching and once you have done that you can go ahead and delete all of the files from your computer by doing a simple search:

1. Go to the Start Menu and click on the Search option so that we can search the computer for files.
2. Windows Explorer should startup and there should be a sidebar available for searching. Before we search and remove the Thumbs.db files we’ll go ahead and disable them from being created in the future. Go to
   Tools->Folder Options->View and the 7th option down should read Do not cache thumbnails. Check that box and hit OK to close the window.
   
3. Now we’ll need to perform a search for the Thumbs.db files. In the file name box type Thumbs.db and expand the Advanced Options so that you can check the box that says Search hidden files and folders. It is important that you check that box because this file is always hidden.
   
4. After it finishes scanning your hard drive just select all of the files and delete them.

That’s all there is to it. These files do not typically get very large but if you have a lot of images then they could quickly consume space. More than anything I found them to be annoying because I always have the hidden files visible so they can be distracting. They won’t be any longer though!

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