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
    2024-01-25T20:32:22+00:00

    Unfortunately this is not a valid solution for people who have to remove 10's, 100's, 1000's of folders that include thumbs.db. The other proposed solution with gpedit does not apply to Windows 10/11 Home edition.

    What a ridiculous issue this is. This should have been solved 30 years ago Microsoft.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-02-17T15:42:26+00:00

    For anyone with Windows 10 Home, this post explains how to install Group Policy Editor so that you can try Nick's suggestion above.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-enable-the-gpeditmsc-on-windows-10-and-11/dbc76919-f2b5-4dec-a2b7-bcf545c34d00

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-17T06:15:48+00:00

    This is the only solution that works. Hiding the file from view still does make it possible to delete the folder.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-06-01T15:52:56+00:00

    I really appreciate that - both in the detailed, chronological sequence (which made it easy to follow), and the fact that it worked!

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-06-12T18:13:02+00:00

    Rename the Thumbs.db file to Thumbs.dat - you will then be able to delete it and the file folder it resides in.

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