Windows Thumbcache Viewer

The Windows operating system saves thumbnails in a file called thumbs.db whenever you change the folder view mode to thumbnail view. This basically caches the image thumbnails so that they are displayed faster the next time you open that folder with that view mode.

I personally have disabled the thumbnail creation on my system as I see it more of a way to leak private information. Anyone with access can look at the contents of thumbs.db files to check out what a user has been looking at in the past. This may even work if the images used to generate the thumbnails are long gone.

Thumbcache Viewer is a new portable Open Source program for Windows to display the contents of a thumbcache_*.db file. The developer has created a command line and graphical user interface version which need to be downloaded separately.

The first thing that you need to do after starting the program is to click on File > Open to load a file browser to locate and load a thumbcache_*.db file from a connected storage device.These files are located only on Vista and Windows 7 systems, and located in the following folder: %homedrive%\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Please note that you may need to disable the preference to hide important operating system files automatically on the system to see the thumbs.db files in that file browser. The program displays the files, filenames, sizes, checksum and hash information in its interface.

The selection of an entry in the database displays the thumbnail image in a small viewer window. You can move around with the mouse or arrow keys and scale the image with the + or – keys to zoom in or out of the thumbnail image. Alternatively, you can use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out as well.

Files can be renamed by clicking again on the selected thumbnail in the table. Just enter a different file name and press enter to complete the process and save the new file name.

You can download the latest version of Thumbcache Viewer from the Google Code project site. Windows XP users can alternatively Thumbs.db viewer and cleaner which I reviewed back in 2007.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday November 22, 2011 -
Tags:portable software, thumbnail previews, thumbnails, thumbs.db, windows software

Responses so far:

1. Crodol says:

   November 22, 2011 at 9:00 pm

   Thanks, but when I try to open one of the many Thumbs.db files I always get
   “The file is not a thumbcache database.”

   Any idea on why this could happen?

   Reply
   • Martin Brinkmann says:

     November 22, 2011 at 11:17 pm

     It is not identifying the database correctly. Can you try the other program to see if this program works?

     Reply
2. Lloyd says:

   November 22, 2011 at 11:43 pm

   How did you disable the thumbnail creation? I have Win 7, 64-bit.

   Reply
   • Martin Brinkmann says:

     November 22, 2011 at 11:57 pm

     I think it was in Windows Explorer. Go to Tools > Folder Options > View and uncheck Always show icons, never thumbnails

     Reply
     • Roebie says:

       November 23, 2011 at 10:32 am

       For XP it is Windows Explorere -> Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab -> check Do not cache thumbnails