XnView Software

Hi folks,
Xnview is pretty nice. I found my way here by looking originally to fix a problem in which images that I have edited using Microsoft's own tools (including Picture Manager!!) in Windows 7 have lost their Windows Explorer-viewable thumbnails and I can't get them back. I have tried every sane-looking solution on the Internet including cleanup removal of old thumbs files, checking the system and file level viewing attributes are not set to icons only, etc. and etc. I've played with exiv and other low level utilities. I have plenty of disk space. But no luck. Some of my pictures simply will not show a thumbnail under Windows Explorer. I don't understand why this is so hard. But it does seem to me that a platform like XnView is where I should be able to fix this by telling the tool to create and update new thumbnails independently of whatever Windows is failing to do. What's the problem here. This should not be rocket science. Is there a way to point XnView at a folder of images and tell it to update the thumbnails visible to Windows Explorer? Why not? If no, then does anyone know another way? Please don't point me back to useless Microsoft Tech Bulletins. It is not enough to be able to view them in XnView, I need full portability for other people and for standard UI operations.
Thanks in advance for your help,
Pixtode

Thank you for your support request and long description of your problem, pixtode.

XnView uses own database for thumbnails
The thumbnails of Windows Explorer have little to do with the thumbnails of XnView and I doubt that XnView will help in solving your problem with Windows Explorer. XnView caches its thumbnails in a database file named 'xnview.db' which is unknown to the Windows Explorer. So XnView cannot help here.

Thumbnails of Windows Explorer
I don't know internals of the Windows Explorer and have no idea where it stores its thumbnails. If Windows Explorer fails to create and display thumbnails of your files, then the reason might be corrupted images or a (special) file format which cannot be read by the Windows Explorer.

My guess is that you have edited your images and saved in a format which cannot be read by Windows Explorer.
Two questions:
Which format and file extension have the files that you can see as thumbnails in Windows Explorer?
What format and file extension have the files that you can[/u]not[/u] see as thumbnails in Windows Explorer?

EDIT: I just had a look in the internet. There's *lots* of possible reason why Windows (Explorer) fails to display thumbnails: Settings in Windows, setting in Windows Explorer, cache problem, and so on. As written before using XnView will not help you a bit to solve this Windows problem. Please note that this is a problem of your system, not the images. If you pass your images on to somebody else, it's pretty sure that this person will see the thumbnails and will not have any problems with your images.

Hello,
As I stated in my original post I have only edited the images using Microsoft's own tools, mainly Microsoft Picture Manager. I understand that XnView makes its own thumbnails, what I don't understand is why there is not an option to update or repair the Windows Explorer thumbnails with the ones generated by XnView. Especially, given that this is a highly visible problem without a clean solution from Microsoft. All files are jpg format and the properties appear to be equivalent. I would pay good money for a utility that actually fixes this problem and I bet others would too.
Pixtode

Most probably the problem does not lie in your edited images but in the Windows System. XnView is a graphic viewer and not a tool for fixing obscure Windows problems. Please send a sample image to Pierre (contact at xnview dot com ) and me just to make sure that the problem is not the images.

The following topics might be of interest in this context:

• Re: Thumbs.db and explorer addon
• Is it possible to re-create thumbnails embedded in EXIF ?

XnTriq (Re: [url=http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?t=26013&p=104760#p104760]error opening file - (file included)[/url]) wrote:

Vista Forums ([url=http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/142407-corruption-images-thumbnail-view.html#post663072]Corruption of Images on Thumbnail View[/url]) wrote:Recently, I have ended up with damaged and/or destroyed JPEG images due to the thumbnail icon feature and/or Photo Gallery. The condition can be created as follows:

1. Browse to a folder containing JPEG images.
2. Do nothing... as Vista generates the thumbnails, it struggles, and only "half" of it is created (see below).
3. When the image is opened, it is corrupted.

My understanding is that generating a thumbnail should not alter the original image in anyway. However, a thumbnail that was generated fine once before for an image that was fine once before...

Vista Forums ([url=http://www.vistax64.com/1070635-post10.html]Re: Corruption of Images on Thumbnail View[/url]) wrote:I am experiencing the same problem. I was viewing thumbnails of JPG files over a network share, opened a few within Windows Photo Gallery - and on close (clicking the X) Photo Gallery corrupted the files. I am using Vista Home Premium 64bit SP1. I have been looking all over the forums for an answer - and although I have seen posts dating back to the release of VISTA, I have seen no solutions. I am afraid to use the VISTA machine to look at photos as the corruption occurred when the original files shouldn't have been altered at all (closing a file should not equal a file save).