This is the fourth post of our series of 15 posts (one post everyday) about Tips and Tricks to make your Windows experience more satisfactory and comfortable. You can subscribe to our RSS Feed or daily e-mail updates for latest content. Keep checking back this space to know about useful Windows Tips and Tricks.

Here’s the today’s tweak.

How to Turn Off Thumbs.db?

Thumbs.db are files which are created in folders consisting of image or video files so that you can have thumbnail view of your images or videos. It caches the thumbnails so that they need not be generated again if you visit that folder again.

But if you edit a lot of stuff, it could become annoying to see it pop up in all of image or video folders.

To get rid of Thumbs.db, Open Start > Run and type in gpedit.msc and press Enter. It’ll open up Group Policy Editor. On Vista you might have to give confirmation for opening Group Policy Editor.

Move to User Configuration > Administrative Template > Window Components > Windows Explorer. Look for Turn off caching of Thumbnail pictures, double-click on it and then enable it.

This should work for XP Professional and Vista Ultimate users, For rest of you, go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View and select Do not Cache Thumbnails.

This should remove Thumbs.db and thumbnail caching from your System. Remember, it’ll slow down opening of image or video folders a bit as thumbnails need to be generated each time you browse an image or video folder.