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
    2023-03-23T17:44:04+00:00

    Hi,

    I am sorry there are no purge options like that. Windows is constantly using that file and so unless a restart takes place or you kill the file it will be used.

    There are many third party apps which can kill the file being used and you will be able to delete it.

    A few years back I used an application called unlocker which could easily kill the process and delete the file.

    You can request the purge option feature by using the feedback hub

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sen...

    This option will be really useful to all, everyone of us faces this issue at least a few times a year if the folder has images in it.

    Restarting the explorer is also same as ending all the process and loading it up. Thiis stops the file from being used and you can safely delete it.

    Regards

    Sabya

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-09-21T21:31:23+00:00

    I had this same problem. The fix was to rename the Thumbs.db file to Thumbs.dat. Once it was renamed, I was able to delete the file and the folder it was in.

    I'm not sure what caused the Thumbs.db file to suddenly appear in our folders. The solution is not elegant, but it worked for us.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-09-27T16:17:01+00:00

    Although I have never posted to these kinds of forums, I have found a fix. I was struggling with the same issue and found a fix that worked for me.

    To restate my issue, I was attempting to delete some folders as I am going through a lot of organization for my company and these "thumbs.db" files were being used by windows and were restricting me from deleting these files. Below is the fix I found which workes for me!

    1. In the windows search bar, search "gpedit" to open Edit Group Policy.
    2. Follow this path: v User Configuration v Administrative Templates 
      v Windows Components

  v File Explorer
    3. Under the File Explorer menu, double-click the third option from the top labled "Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files"
    4. In the new window that popped up, select "Enabled" on the top left.
    5. Restart your computer.

    This will not remove any thumbs.db files that are already there, but it will force File Explorer to not access them and to not create more. Upon restarting, you should be able to remove any wanted folders that were previously impossible to remove.

    Hope this helps!

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-09-27T17:22:55+00:00

    Thanks for the fix. We also discovered that if we renamed the Thumbs.db file to Thumbs.dat, we could delete it.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-10-31T08:24:28+00:00

    Another solution is to use WinRar.
    In WinRar you have the option to delete files when archiving.
    So you'd simply create an archive of the file or folder and then delete the rar file afterwards.
    Sometimes this works...

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