How to Enable or Disable Media and Video Thumbnail Preview in Windows XP
Windows XP automatically generate thumbnail preview for images, pictures, photos, videos, HTML pages and other media clips with format supported by the operating system. The image or media preview is shown in the Details pane on the left of Windows Explorer, or when the files are viewed in Thumbnails view.
However, some users may not want or prefer the automatic preview and thumbnail generation when browsing files list. The preview hide the icon of the files, and doesn’t allow users to instant know the format or extension of the files, such as whether a video is of .avi, .wmv or .mpg format. Beside, the process to show the thumbnail preview may slow down the file listing process when opening folder with video files. Beside, the preview on no codec or corrupted movie or video clip (i.e. no index from a partial download) may cause system problems such as Windows XP stops responding or freezing with 100% CPU utilization, and prevent users from deleting, renaming or moving the file until the file is completely loaded. The error happens because Windows needs a proper codec in order to correctly and validly create a thumbnail for video media. Without codec, or codec is broken or buggy will have problem.
To turn off, remove or disable video and media thumbnail preview in Windows XP, and fix above issues relating to video (AVI) problems, simply issue the following command in a Command Prompt window. To open Command Prompt window, type “Cmd” in Start -> Run box.
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll
It’s important to note that once the command above is run, the thumbnail preview will be disabled and will not be shown or displayed for all video, movie and other media files. And, users also lose the ability to see the summary properties in the tooltip and file properties dialog for AVI, WMA, WMV, ASF and WAV files.
To re-enable, or turn off the media preview again, use the following command:
regsvr32 shmedia.dll
There is another trick to disable and turn off preview thumbnail generation for image and photos, which use Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.
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Entries (RSS)
March 17th, 2008 00:18
[...] see how to disable video preview. Get help or contribute tips or tricks at My Digital Life [...]
April 5th, 2008 14:45
Question, Si jamais c’est sous windows 2000, quel commande serai ?
July 11th, 2008 03:10
Lost my movie thumbnails, got them back thanks to you !
THANKS !!!
July 22nd, 2008 17:27
I lost my ‘wmv’ thumbnail preview, but used regsvr /u shmedia dll to turn all displays off, then used regsvr 32 shmedia dll to turn all back on, and its All ok now. I was using K- lite mega codec-pack which didnt solve the prob(may have contributed) but this did. Thanks, much appreciated.
July 26th, 2008 05:46
Hi!
This worked with all my .avi files but I’m unable to disable my MPEG-4 movies preview… Is there any other command I could use?
Thanks in advance
August 10th, 2008 23:49
Can someone plzzzzzz tell me for vista
I need to get thumbnail preview BADLY for my Vista ultimate 32.
see the screen shot here:
http://www.tinypic.ws/files/g8fjcm5nty9ifrdpi5iz.jpg
Anyone for vista??
August 23rd, 2008 08:05
Very helpfull thanks
October 3rd, 2008 04:47
[...] may be causing the problem. Try turning off thumbnail preview. You can find instructions here And as I said before the indexing service is not responsible for generating the [...]