Oct 05, 2007 09:07 pm can i do this:
Regenerate the video thumbnail extractor handler--Start--Run--type in
REGSVR32 SHMEDIA.DLL
someone said that somewhere.
missing thumbnails!
Posted on Oct 05, 2007 08:56 pm
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
i can't find the answer anywhere. all my thumbnails for my videos are gone. it happened when i moved stuff around a bit. nothing i try works. i don't know how to rebuild them, and every explanation you see online is wrong.
anyone know how to fix it?
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Oct 05, 2007 09:07 pm can i do this:
Regenerate the video thumbnail extractor handler--Start--Run--type in
REGSVR32 SHMEDIA.DLL
someone said that somewhere.
Oct 05, 2007 11:05 pm Are you talking on your PC at home? Did the setting get changed in the view menu to not show thumbnails?
Oct 05, 2007 11:21 pm no it's nothing so simple. i have been into the properties tabs of the folders and have tried that operation on all folders and subfolders. they need regenerated somehow...
Oct 05, 2007 11:46 pm forty, try a system restore to roll back your settings.
Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.
Select Restore my Computer to an Earlier Time.
Select the last recognizable date when your folders looked cool to you (if you can remember when that was).
Click Apply or OK.
[size=1]This is just a suggestion and should not be taken as professional advice. All opinions are those of Herb Utsmelz, based upon his personal experiences.[/size]
Oct 06, 2007 04:22 am that will mess up lots of stuff.
there;s got to be a way to simply REBUILD thumbs! for god;s sake it;s so elementary. i see why peeps complain about windows. obviously, this should be entirely automatic. the system should check for this. i spent two hours on this today and am no closer to solving this very elementary problem. and the same thing has happened twice before too. all in all, one year trying to solve this damn problem.
the year? 2007. 2007!!!
Oct 06, 2007 08:21 am I think if you view hidden files there should be a thumb.db file and if you delete it they should be regenerated...
Oct 06, 2007 09:57 am yeah, I was just gonna mention that stupid thumbs.db file...yet another hidden file from Windows that keeps track of crap. It's a database of generated thumbnails from that folder...if memory serves.
Oct 06, 2007 12:27 pm herb, i was looking at that checkbox the other day. flipped it on and off. it seems involved but checking it and refreshing many different ways and then unchecking it does nothing.
db yeah. i think if i could erase the thumbs.db that might make them regenerate. but i didn't see a thumbs db in these folders when i viewed hidden files. is it kept somewhere else?
by the way, this history of this: what happened was that these vids had thumbnails in their original folders. then i cut and pasted individual videos into new folders--newly-created ones-- and erased the original folder, thinking that i could regenerate thumbnails later somehow.
Oct 06, 2007 12:34 pm it should have... do you have 'view thumbnails' enabled in the explorer->view menu?... maybe it reset to 'view icons'...
Oct 06, 2007 01:21 pm there are no thumbs.db files in these new folders even when i show hidden files. whhy would that be? (that 'do not cache thumbs' box is unchecked)
Oct 06, 2007 02:09 pm anyone know anything about:
Regenerate the video thumbnail extractor handler--Start--Run--type in
REGSVR32 SHMEDIA.DLL
i want to type this in and try it, but i'm just wondering if i should. this is a registry adjustment, right? has something to do with the registry?
Oct 06, 2007 02:59 pm any insight is appreciated. i'm about to do it. i just kind of want to know if it's safe. i have never modified the registry and don't quite know what this is. though i found some stuff online saying this might work...
Oct 06, 2007 03:50 pm well, it didn't work. actually it seems like it might have corrputed my old ipod somehow, the one that houses all my old session files (no idea how that would happen). i created a system restore point so i guess i'll try going back to that and hope the ipod is ok.
if anyone could tell me if there's like a separate cache for thumbnails somewhere maybe i can move stuff around and get it working again. this is a strange thing. such a basic function, easily gets corrupted, no good documentation online about it. and you should see all the people having this problem. people are talking about it everywhere, and no one seems to know really how to fix it.
crazy. jeez, windows. i don't complain about you a lot, but this is really lame.
Oct 06, 2007 04:50 pm Why is it that every time I see "thumbs.db" in this thread I start to laugh??
Sorry. Just had to say that.
Oct 06, 2007 05:06 pm i dunno, me too
but check out what i just discovered. a puzzle, a clue. if anyone can get creative here you might come up with a solution...
i made my movies folder shareable on my network as an experiment. then i peered into it via my laptop. i didn't move any files, i just let my vista laptop access the folders. then, on the vista laptop, i chose view>large icons. every single thumbnail slowly built itself up here on my vista laptop.
how is it doing that? what did it access to do that? and what can i do with it? i tried moving a file to this laptop, where i could see it with thumbnail, and then sent it back through the network to a new folder. but no go. once it's back on the xp system in a new folder, after having been 'rebuilt' on this vista computer, it still lacks a thumbnail!
Oct 06, 2007 08:34 pm forty, what if any new programs have you installed or updated in the last few days that might coincide with the thumbs going away? I had a similar problem happen years ago when I installed some freeware app. It actually corrupted a registry entry and made certain type files in accessible. I simply did a restore to a point just before installing the software. Then let Reg Mechanic do a reg repair and all was good.
Oct 06, 2007 09:25 pm this happened a long time ago, so i don;t know. the only thing that comes to mind is windows media player classic. it might have started way back around then. it's the only other video program i think i've ever installed. i can't roll back to way back then. any ideas? you might be on the right track with some kind of muffed association thing. the registry thing i mentioned above did not work.
do you know how i can determine which codecs are handling playback for specific videos?
Oct 06, 2007 09:30 pm what if i copy the thumbs folder from my vista, where they;'re displaying properly, and replace the thumbs.db files in my other computer with these ones?
Oct 06, 2007 09:36 pm let me explain that better. i'm viewing the folder on the other computer on this one, through the network. so the files don't really exist on this computer. yet i see thumbnails on this one. i thought that meant, since there are no thumbs in the other computer, that a thumbs.db file was being built on this computer but i guess that's not true (nor does it make sense, i guess). so i don't have a thumbs file to paste into the other computer. are they on this one at all, anywhere? what's happening? not sure why i can see them on this comp but not that one.
Oct 06, 2007 09:52 pm Ya, I saw that registry hack you found in another spot on the web. It stated that the file association's might be corrupt or miss configured if it didn't work with that shell command. I am guessing it might be something very simple and we are all overlooking it. I would suggest maybe trying one of the reg repair utilities out there. Other then that I'm stumped for now.
Oct 06, 2007 10:00 pm ok thanks for your help. i will do what i can with that, but i'm thinking it's not a registry problem. mostly because, i nos realize, there's no pattern to it.
these vids all once had thumbs. moving them to new locations erased the thumbs.
also, there are some wmv files which show no thumbs, as well as some mpegs. mpegs seem to be more commonly lacking thumbs, but it's not absolute, so there's really no pattern i can see. but if some are showing up, i don't think it's a registry problem, myself.
Oct 06, 2007 10:26 pm I guess I kinda have to agree with you forty. It just seems odd that they simply dis appeared like that. I am guessing it must have something to do with the file association thing then. Something is just not registering them in Windows at the moment because it does not recognize them.
Oct 06, 2007 11:24 pm problem half-solved!
i erased the thumbs.db file (couldn't figure out how to find it most of the day, but didn't try hard because i didn't think it would work) then rebooted, and one of the folders rebuilt thumbnails. so i went and erased all the other thumbs.db files in these video folders. am rebooting now.
but it's puzzling. a few of the folders had no thumbs.db file. two others would not erase. they were being used by another process. i am trying to erase thumbs files from the folders above these folders, thinking that maybe somehow the vids are still associated with those older thumbs files, and therefore new ones weren't generated when i moved the files. sounds doubtful but we'll see.
Oct 07, 2007 12:16 am ****. i just realized one of my bigger drives is set to fat32. and it's mostly full. how did i not notice that before?
Oct 07, 2007 04:17 pm forty, I think that the association thing is the key here. That would explain why the registry shell command didn't work. The files were still trying to be associated with or as something else.
The thing that some other application is still seeing them or registering them might have had something to do with it as well.
Try rebooting into safe mode and nothing should be trying to associate with the files there. Then you can delete the other thumbs.db files hopefully.
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