Unable to delete thumbs.db

Anonymous
2023-03-22T08:55:44+00:00

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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-12-17T19:58:27+00:00

    I tried renaming yesterday, but couldn't delete. But now, after seeing your message I tried again and it worked. I think I was running into the lockout situation. Thank you ☺

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-17T19:46:34+00:00

    I just rename and if that works, delete. Other than that? I don't edit my registry either.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-17T19:36:33+00:00

    Yes, I've renamed and also opened it and replaced the contents with a single character. I can't do any of the command line or registry editor suggestions as our workplace is set up to block all of that to the end user.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-12-17T12:09:35+00:00

    Did you try the rename and then delete solution? Do not try to do anything first or it will lock up and you will have to wait a day or so.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-12-16T21:55:08+00:00

    I've tried that but it copied it to the desktop rather than moving it. I could delete the copy from the desktop but the original file remains 'open' and therefore unable to be deleted.

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