It wasn't; now it is. No difference :(
Unable to delete thumbs.db
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Anonymous
I'm on the newest Win10 and am looking for a way to delete folders which only contain one file, the thumbs.db, and nothing else.
I've read several things in this thread (which is now closed) where some didn't help and others were too painful to be even tried (why should i have to boot in safe mode?).
Is there a easy way to delete those folders?
I'm often succeeding with restarting explorer.exe from the taskmanager's app tab (wondering why explorer.exe is the only process offering "restart" in its context menu) and then being quick enough to delete such folders before explorer grabs em again. But there are always some hard ones which somehow escape this hack.
For such the only working thing i know of is to actually end all explorer.exe processes, delete the folder from a cmd line with rmdir /S/Q "foldername" and restart explorer.exe. But both approaches are a pain because usually i have many explorer.exe windows open an don't like to restore them all manually because that's a waste of time.
Is there a proper way to delete those folders which doesn't involve hacking the registry, changing system wide settings, booting from a linux live cd or killing explorer.exe? After all their empty so i don't understand why there's the need to hold on to a thumbs.db which by then shouldn't contain any thumbs. Maybe there's a purge-unused-thumbs option somewhere?
Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage
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66 answers
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Anonymous
2023-03-22T13:57:23+00:00 -
Anonymous
2023-03-22T13:06:47+00:00 How about the "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"? Can you check if it is enabled?
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Anonymous
2023-03-22T12:43:36+00:00 I checked "Always show icons, never thumbnails" and selected "Don't show hidden files, folders, or drives" but still cannot delete the folder containing thumbs.db.
Tried it many times in a row now, each setting separately and both together. Nothing works.
> If it doesn't work then the only option is to temporarily turn off thumbnails so you can delete the folder.
This sounds intuitive but also then i cannot delete the folder. Which is strange?
I used process explorer to search for the processes with open handles to that folder and it shows explorer.exe, nothing else.
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Anonymous
2023-03-22T12:02:04+00:00 Try to disable the showing of system files. Go to the Folder Options window once again and then in the View tab, check the option "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)". Apply and OK. Check if you'll be able to delete it now.
If it doesn't work then the only option is to temporarily turn off thumbnails so you can delete the folder. Once deleted, you can turn it on again. Since Windows is constantly caching the thumbnails, the file is being used all the time so the only way is to disable it so it won't generate a cache.
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Anonymous
2023-03-22T11:28:43+00:00 Hi Paulo
Your suggestion is a system wide change and not just for a particular folder, right?
I'd like to have thumbnails turned on.
Is the only solution to temporary turn em off before deleting thumbs.db and then turn em on again?
I don't understand where there's a thumbs.db in an empty folder in the first place. Shouldn't it be automatically deleted or at least not be kept alive with an open file handle in this case?