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
    2025-02-05T17:33:38+00:00

    I just want to give my 2 cents worth. I've had some stubborn thumbs.db files that were giving me heartache. I tried all that was mentioned above, and the only real solution was to reboot the server.

    That being said, I just had an experience where I tried multiple times to delete one of the files, each time it told me I was unable to delete it because it was being used. Low and behold, on the 4th attempt of trying to delete it, within a 10 second time frame, it magically let me delete it.

    I tried this on other stubborn Thumb files that were giving me fits. One file took over 20 attempts to get the file deleted. Very odd. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with our Anti-Virus software (Sentinel 1), but thought I would share.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-11T19:42:04+00:00

    I change the file type from .db to .txt answer "yes" to the questions and then delete and again say yes to messages and it is deleted.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-12T16:12:02+00:00

    I find if I change view options in windows explore to - hide system files, and not view hidden files. Next the important key part: in task manager (ctrl + alt + del) is to restart windows explorer. A lot of people miss this step.

    If it still doesn't work, additionally change windows explorer options:

    always show icons/never thumbnails, and uncheck display icons on thumbnails.

    Again, restart windows explorer.

    Works on multiple work stations for me with platform win10 & win11.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-04-04T15:30:52+00:00

    Thank you.

    That worked. It was really annoying not to be able to delete those folders.

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-04-04T17:40:20+00:00

    No need to go thru changing all those setting options. All you need to do is change the folder name to anything other than Photo, Pictures, Video, Media, etc. When the folders has any media type name it's in title, it automatically creates the Thumbnail. Change name, and then you can delete.

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