I installed Windows 8 on my home computer a few weeks ago and so far there have been no problems.
However, I noticed one strange thing: whenever I browsed through a directory containing images or videos, I just saw the default icon for that file type, not a preview of the file thumbnails. This also happens when installing Windows 10.
So if I go to my Image Library on Windows 8/10, I get a photo icon for each image:
And if I were to browse a directory full of videos on Windows 8/10, I would get the same thing, only with the default video icon:
It was getting very annoying and I realized this was happening ever since I installed Windows 8/10 on my PC. I’m not sure why this view is used by default instead of thumbnail preview like in Windows 7, but if you want thumbnails back in Windows Explorer, here’s how to do it.
First, open Windows Explorer, click View, then click Options and Change Folder and Search Options.
Then go to the View tab and uncheck the Always show icons, not thumbnails option.
Once you get rid of this checked option, you should get thumbnails for all your images, videos and even documents.
There is another place where you can customize the display of icons or thumbnails in Windows Explorer. First, right-click “Computer” on the desktop and select “Properties”. Then click on Advanced System Settings on the left.
The System Properties dialog box opens. Here you need to click on the Advanced tab and then click on Settings under the Performance section.
Finally, make sure Show thumbnails instead of icons is checked.
With these two settings, you should now see thumbnails of images, videos, documents, and other file types in File Explorer in Windows 8/10. If you still only see icons, please leave a comment here and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!
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