What You Should Know About Thumbs.db File

What is Thumbs.db?
Beginning with Windows Millennium, Microsoft added easier access to the Thumbnail View feature by directly placing it into the View option that appears within the top tool bar area of Windows Explorer and My Computer. This way if you were to enter a folder that contained pictures, you could easily view the folder contents in Thumbnail View and see all the pictures in Thumbnail format. This feature was also included within Windows XP.

However, whenever you would change the Folder View back to Icons, Tiles, List and/or Details, a mystery file called Thumbs.db winds up being created within that folder. This thumbs.db file is actually generated by Windows and it is simply a database file containing the small images displayed when you viewed a folder in Thumbnail View. It is a hidden file not viewed by most users and not updated when files are moved from a folder which images have passed through or deleted. This gives a secondary chance that someone will leave behind at least partial evidence of an image in their windows folders.

How to Disable Thumbs.db?
There are 2 ways to disable thumbs.db file from being automatically generated.
1. In Windows Explorer, go to Tools -> Folder Options or open the Folder Options icon in the Control Panel.
Choose the View tab, check the Do not cache thumbnails option and click OK

2. You can also change this setting in the Registry:
Go to Start -> Run -> type regedit and click OK.
Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.
* Double-click the DisableThumbnailCache value.

* Enter 1 for its value.
* Click OK and close the Registry Editor when you’re done; you’ll have to log off and then log back on for this to take effect.

Here’s the fun part.
How to view thumbnail cache files in Thumbs.db file?
You can use Thumbnail Database Viewer to ONLY VIEW thumbnail cache files embedded in thumbs.db file.

Thumbnail Database Viewer requires .NET Framework 2.0.
[ Download Thumbnail Database Viewer v1.1 ]

How to extract thumbnail cache files in Thumbs.db?
You can extract the thumbnail cache files from Thumbs.db using ThumbsExtract. It is developed by Shapeless. It’s in DOS, so you’ll have to run some simple command to extract JPG file from thumbs.db. You can either place the thumbs.db file together with ThumbsExtract.exe and run the command “ThumbsExtract.exe thumbs.db” or you can define the location of the thumbs.db.

[ Download ThumbsExtract ]

How to delete ALL thumbs.db file?
You can either use the Windows Search to find for all thumbs.db file and delete them all, or you can use a freeware called Thumbnail Database Cleaner to automatically search for all thumbs.db file and deleting them.

Thumbnail Database Cleaner also requires .NET Framework 2.0.
[ Download Thumbnail Database Cleaner ]

Now you know how dangerous Thumbs.db files are on your computer. Even if you’ve deleted sensitive pictures, there are still traces of the images laying around somewhere…