Are you having problems where photos, videos or other filetypes are just showing a generic icon rather than a preview thumbnail? There are several possible reasons for this, but we'll list the steps to resolve this in the most likely order to fix things:
Set folder options to show thumbnails:
Clear the thumbnail cache
Set folder options to show thumbnails:
- File Explorer has an option to disable thumbnail previews, which could have been accidentally selected. To ensure that you have opted to view preview thumbnails, please search for "File Explorer Options" on the start menu and run this:
- Then click the View tab and make sure that you do not have a check mark next to "Always show icons, never thumbnails":
- Click OK when you are done and then see if you can see thumbnail previews again.
Clear the thumbnail cache
- If the above steps fail to work, the next step would be to clear your thumbnail cache. The easiest way to do this is to search for "cleanmgr" on the start menu and run "disk clean-up" when it appears, or to open it via the "run" box (press ⊞ Win + R):
- Then, select your primary drive and click OK:
- Now scroll down the list and make sure that you have select the option to clear the Thumbnail cache and click OK to begin the cache cleanup process:
