Windows 10: Explorer not displaying PDF thumbnails, but will display JPEGs

Hey Guys, this is an odd one.

I have a new Win10 machine which completely refuses to display thumbnails for PDF file types.

I have checked the view settings in explorer, and also the visual effects settings and it looks correct.

I have tried using Adobe Reader DC (which required a preferences setting to be changed to generate thumbnails) and also Foxit Reader (which doesn't) with no luck. Currently I have Foxit Reader installed.

PDF`s are currently visible in a preview pane, but PDF thumbnails simply wont show up! JPG thumbnails, however, generate just fine.

I did have this issue a while ago on an old machine, but the issue "went away" - I didn't take any deliberate actions to fix, so I`m at a loss to know whats going on here.

Any replies greatly appreciated.

:)

 

Thumbnails do not show for pictures

I have "Turn off the display of thumbnails and only display icons" unchecked. Thumbnails for files such as JPEG files show up, but the thumbnails don't show up for files such as Canon's RAW files with the CR2 extensions. I can buy software that will
make these appear, but it doesn't appear that Microsoft keeps up with anything past the basics with regard to photos. It surprises me that they don't.

 

When I upgraded to Win 10 my folder thumbnails no longer fill the whole folder

Compatibility mode (Win 7) didn't work. The display driver is current for Win 10. Nothing changed. The size of the thumbnail jpeg's are the same as pictured as above. The display driver is current for Win 10. The pixel dimensions are all at least a minimum
of 100x100 px.

 

Hi, does this help?
A quick and easy fix for pdf thumbnail problem ... |Adobe Community

Presumably this is the option you're referring to:
Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs in Windows Explorer

 

Yes, that's the option I'm referring to.

That adobe post is 4 years old so not too sure its pertinent now. Adobe have apparently fixed their lack of support for thumbnails in their PDF reader based on what ive read, but to be honest that's all pretty academic for me- reason being that I have 3 other machines using foxit on win10 to generate pdf thumbnails, so I know it can work..... its just this one doesn't want to play for some reason.

 

Hi I have the latest build (14393.222) and use Sumatra - at one point it had an experimental version which produced thumbnails- but this is probably not supported now. I installed Nitro pdf reader- and that does produce thumbnails.

Maybe you'd like to try that just as an experiment for comparison?

If it's an Adobe specific issue, you may be better referring that to their forum. There have been a couple of issues with Adobe Reader and Win 10.

 

Cheers - I`ll install nitro as another comparison and report back. My guess is that it wont work as I`m suspecting this is something not right at the OS layer rather than the application layer, but its a good test nonetheless.

 

Hmm, I've just tried Foxit R, and that as default is supposed to show thumbnails, but doesn't...

 

That's very interesting. I`ve installed Foxit Reader on a few different machines and also after a few reinstalls, and for me at least it has allowed thumbnails to display. Perhaps it is a little flaky.

 

Well, I reset Foxit as default, and now it does display thumbnails... hey ho..

 

This all sounds jolly inconsistent to me - Foxit should be (and has been) able to consistently display thumbnails in explorer regardless of which reader is the default application. In fact, that's my default configuration, which I`ve used on 3 machines - I have foxit installed to provide a PDF printer and thumbnails - and I have Drawboard PDF as the default viewer.

I`ll have a play with Nitro at lunchtime and let you know the results.

 

There is a problem with the latest Foxit update which it why Explorer preview doesn't work on x64 systems. They only included the x86 .dll file NOT the x64 .dll.

The fix can be found here http://forums.foxitsoftware.com/foru...689#post157689

 

Superb - many thanks for this- it fixed my problem!

For reference, here is what I did::

1 Download the plugin for Win7 64bit system via below link.
http://sync-cn.foxitsoftware.com/iss...lHndlr_x64.dll

2 Replace the file FoxitThumbnailHndlr_x86.dll with the downloaded one (make sure you delete the x86 DLL). The file could be found under the installation folder, somewhere like
C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Shell Extensions .

3 Register the downloaded preview plug-in.
1) Click on the Start Menu and select the Run item.
2) Type cmd in the field and right click the result and choose 'run as administrator' to run it.
3) A terminal window will appear on the screen. Run command regsvr32.exe "[path of the plug-in]“ to re-register the plug-in. For example,
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Shell Extensions\FoxitThumbnailHndlr_x64.dll"