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I ran the Disk Cleanup utility that comes with Windows to clean temporary files and the thumbnail cache. Now all of my video files no longer show thumbnail previews and look like in the screenshot below. How do I fix this so that I get preview thumbnails back for video files? I already rebooted but that didn't do anything. My OS is Windows 7 SP 1.

enter image description here

user3700562
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  • Windows should automatically generate them when opening the folder. Have you maybe disabled generating the thumbnails in the settings some time ago? – LPChip Oct 18 '21 at 14:28
  • No, I did uninstall VLC though and replaced it with MPC-HC. The video files play just fine when I open them so I don't think it's a codec problem? – user3700562 Oct 18 '21 at 14:30
  • Might be that Media Player Classic doesn't support thumbnails. It has been long ago since I used it. I now always use VLC. You can try installing VLC just to see if that fixes the issue. At least, then you know why. You can then uninstall VLC and see if you can fix it otherwise. – LPChip Oct 18 '21 at 14:47
  • I reinstalled VLC and made it the default application for all media files but it's still not working. Reboot after that had no effect either. – user3700562 Oct 18 '21 at 14:59
  • And you are very sure you have not disabled the option to automatically generate thumbnails in the config in explorer, advanced? – LPChip Oct 18 '21 at 16:14
  • Yes I didn't disable anything but I figured it out. Some obscure registry entry was missing and after I re-added it, everything worked again. I guess either VLC or MPC-HC must have messed it up! – user3700562 Oct 18 '21 at 17:58
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    Does this answer your question? [Thumbnails for video files are not showing in Windows 7](https://superuser.com/questions/545708/thumbnails-for-video-files-are-not-showing-in-windows-7) – Ramhound Oct 18 '21 at 18:50
  • wow yes that is exactly what caused it only I found the info on some other website after hours of searching :) – user3700562 Oct 18 '21 at 19:12

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