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

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-28T12:50:31+00:00

    When a Thumbs.db file cannot be removed because an error shows that a process has the Thumbs.db file open, then killing the process holding it open will free it up and the Thumbs.db file can be removed.

    NOTE: It is likely that after killing the process holding the Thumbs.db file open that related processes will also be killed, such as Windows Explorer, so before killing the process, open a Powershell window and use the "cd" command to change the folder to the folder containing the Thumbs.db file:

    e.g, if the Thumbs.db file is in c:\users\music the Powershell command would be: cd c:\users\music

    To run Powershell press the Windows Key and r at the same time, then type powershell in text box)

    Find the process that needs to be killed

    • Run taskmgr (Windows Key and r at the same time, then type taskmgr in text box)

    • Go to Performance Tab 

    • Open Resource Monitor (Bottom of Screen).

    • In the Resource Monitor switch to CPU tab

    • Select Associated Handles (Below list of processes)

    • In the text box type  Thumbs.db 

    • Select the process listed and Right Click to end (kill) the process

    The Powershell window should still be available, to remove the Thumbs.db file the Powershell command would be: rm -f Thumbs.db

    • If related processes have also been killed (e.g, some windows or the taskbar are no longer running) reboot Windows

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-17T14:58:46+00:00

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  3. 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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  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
    2025-02-11T19:42:04+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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