The nightmare is back: Win7 revives the evil Thumbs.db files

- Oh god...... they're everywhere!!!!!!! -
That's what you're going to scream as soon as you enable "show hidden files" on Windows 7. The stoopid Thumbs.db are back and are going to infest all your hard drives, thumbs drives and network drives until you convert all your pictures to the .IFF amiga bitmap image files hoping Explorer wouldn't be able to read them. Is it a conspiracy to stop the spreading of those nasty Steve B photos showing him in compromising positions? Only God knows.

blowdart said:

What do you mean back? They never went away.

Unless you skipped Vista entirely you should already have found this out

I guess those files never really bothered me. I also wonder what the point of that picture was.

At least its better than .DS_Store

blowdart said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

Huh. I have a bunch of thumbs.db files on my Vista box. How weird.

And I don't have them on my Win7 box.

Bas said:

I guess those files never really bothered me. I also wonder what the point of that picture was.

I also wonder what the point of that picture was.

It adds the right amount of drama.

Nightmare? Evil?
It's just a hidden system file!

Jeez, you'd think thumbs.db came and killed your dog or something.

OnlyJack said:

Bas said:

*snip*

I also wonder what the point of that picture was.

It adds the right amount of drama.

What don't you just turn it off then?

Yggdrasil said:

Nightmare? Evil?
It's just a hidden system file!

Jeez, you'd think thumbs.db came and killed your dog or something.

"Thumbs.db" files bother you?!?!?!
How about bloody stupid "sqm" files in the drive's root folder?
They're definitely back... And they ARE really annoying...

Maybe Windows 7 started from the XP kernel .

BlackTiger said:

Yggdrasil said:

*snip*

"Thumbs.db" files bother you?!?!?!
How about bloody stupid "sqm" files in the drive's root folder?
They're definitely back... And they ARE really annoying...

I don't have those either.

Yggdrasil said:

Nightmare? Evil?
It's just a hidden system file!

Jeez, you'd think thumbs.db came and killed your dog or something.

It's 2009, NTFS has been supporting additional data streams for a dozen years yet we still have those useless DESKTOP.INI, THUMBS.DB and EHTUMBS.DB (if you use Media Center) files everywhere. You know where the information about folders (view, columns) are saved? IN THE REGISTRY! It's f-ing unbelievable.

Things improved slightly on Vista where all the thumbnails were stored in just one central place so that you didn't have to see all those useless files around but since it was working so well they probably decided to scrap it to follow their "IT MUST BE UNNECESSARILY COMPLICATED" explorer policy.

Can somebody mail the lazy explorer team and let them know the wonders ntfs data streams can do and ask them to actually start improving explorer rather than just moving buttons around it in each new windows version? Geez... explorer looks like a Norton product, same crap just a different UI in each version. I bet the next version will come with a giant blinking yellow taskbar toolbar that warns you about folder view changes. I know there isn't much to expect from a team that took 3 years and 2 service packs to make the status bar setting stick on XP and that can't still get Vista explorer to save its view settings 2 years after its release (SP2 RC still doesn't make view setting stick) but please, even Konqueror of the still messy KDE4 does a better job.

What don't you just turn it off then?

OnlyJack said:

Yggdrasil said:

*snip*

It's 2009, NTFS has been supporting additional data streams for a dozen years yet we still have those useless DESKTOP.INI, THUMBS.DB and EHTUMBS.DB (if you use Media Center) files everywhere. You know where the information about folders (view, columns) are saved? IN THE REGISTRY! It's f-ing unbelievable.

Things improved slightly on Vista where all the thumbnails were stored in just one central place so that you didn't have to see all those useless files around but since it was working so well they probably decided to scrap it to follow their "IT MUST BE UNNECESSARILY COMPLICATED" explorer policy.

Can somebody mail the lazy explorer team and let them know the wonders ntfs data streams can do and ask them to actually start improving explorer rather than just moving buttons around it in each new windows version? Geez... explorer looks like a Norton product, same crap just a different UI in each version. I bet the next version will come with a giant blinking yellow taskbar toolbar that warns you about folder view changes. I know there isn't much to expect from a team that took 3 years and 2 service packs to make the status bar setting stick on XP and that can't still get Vista explorer to save its view settings 2 years after its release (SP2 RC still doesn't make view setting stick) but please, even Konqueror of the still messy KDE4 does a better job.

What don't you just turn it off then?

Because every time I would open a folder with pictures, especially RAW pictures, it would take minutes to load the previews. You don't want that to happen, do you?

NTFS alternate data streams are for compatibility with Mac files. Why would you want to use it for thumbnails?

"Unless you skipped Vista entirely you should already have found this out " .... WOW another retard Explorer change from Vista I didn't know about.. (and another reason not bother upgrading to a crap experience)

Need I not bother explaining why having the thumbs.db cached within the same folder its actually storing the generated thumbs from is also a plus. For a few reasons (like just copying the that folder(s) data along with its already generated thumb data especially good for external media, minimizes the time on regenerating thumbs on the same data!... and is much better than having one FIXED path within your winshit user profile. Unlike noobs, I don't like all my data stored within windows shity User profile directory defaulty nonsense for a number of reasons... it just stupid! More so because of the lack of choice on how/where I want certain application cached files stored pisses me off.

"How about bloody stupid "sqm" files in the drive's root folder?" I guess with all the FAIL design going on at MS and Live and other products it doesn't surprise me they'd freely dump shity customer experience databits on your root directory. Just statistical purposes I guess..  perhaps if they just got a freaking clue instead of feeling the need to gathering stats with which they still won't develop any decent from.... afteral Messenger is still pretty much same crap it was years ago only with different lame UI changes.

OnlyJack said:

Yggdrasil said:

*snip*

It's 2009, NTFS has been supporting additional data streams for a dozen years yet we still have those useless DESKTOP.INI, THUMBS.DB and EHTUMBS.DB (if you use Media Center) files everywhere. You know where the information about folders (view, columns) are saved? IN THE REGISTRY! It's f-ing unbelievable.

Things improved slightly on Vista where all the thumbnails were stored in just one central place so that you didn't have to see all those useless files around but since it was working so well they probably decided to scrap it to follow their "IT MUST BE UNNECESSARILY COMPLICATED" explorer policy.

Can somebody mail the lazy explorer team and let them know the wonders ntfs data streams can do and ask them to actually start improving explorer rather than just moving buttons around it in each new windows version? Geez... explorer looks like a Norton product, same crap just a different UI in each version. I bet the next version will come with a giant blinking yellow taskbar toolbar that warns you about folder view changes. I know there isn't much to expect from a team that took 3 years and 2 service packs to make the status bar setting stick on XP and that can't still get Vista explorer to save its view settings 2 years after its release (SP2 RC still doesn't make view setting stick) but please, even Konqueror of the still messy KDE4 does a better job.

What don't you just turn it off then?

Because every time I would open a folder with pictures, especially RAW pictures, it would take minutes to load the previews. You don't want that to happen, do you?

Then how come I don't have any Thumbs.db files on my harddrive? Well, I found a couple of them but I know those folders were copied from an XP machine so that's normal. I deleted them and they don't reappear. Additionally "the central place" for thumbnails is alive and well in Win7.

Seriously, have you considered trying to delete them and see if they show up again? Maybe you dual boot Win7 and XP? Maybe it's a stupid application that creates them? Maybe it's a bug in Win7 BETA? Any of these would have been far less usefull than a rant.

As for NTFS alternate data streams: that's probably a bad idea. Those data streams are not visibile to many if not most existing file utilities and if you ever need/want to delete them you'll have a problem. A central cache is far better because you can keep its size in check (you really don't want to cache stuff without putting a cap on the cache size) and it can be cleaned up easily.

ZippyV said:

OnlyJack said:

*snip*

NTFS alternate data streams are for compatibility with Mac files. Why would you want to use it for thumbnails?

Because Microsoft is already using them? When you download a file from teh internets and when you open it in explorer you get a warning dialog: how do you think explorer knows that file has been downloaded? Because all the files downloaded from IE have an hidden stream called ZoneIdentifier used to tell explorer where the file come from. You can also save "Custom" properties on some type of files, even on those useless thumbs.db files!



Oh, the irony!!