Thumbnails Missing in Vista Explorer Large & Extra Large View

**Crossposted**

The thumbnails on my vista system are also not showing properly. It is very strange because I do have a SINGLE sole thumbnail of a pdf file displaying properly but the rest of my pdf files are all generic red acrobat icon. I am determined to get to the bottom of this as I have tons of ebooks and pdf files that I need to view in thumbnail format.

The roxio forum were also talking about loosing thumbnails in vista's explorer. The techs there claim its a vista problem and will wait till MS addresses the issues. However, I am not completely convinced.

The fact that we seen it work partially with some systems and the fact that I can generate a single thumbnail tells me there is more to it than meets the eye.

I suspect a registry tweak will solve all the problems.

Here's what I found so far.

On my XP system the thumbs works perfectly.
In the taskmanager I noticed that there is an auxiliary component
to acrobat that runs along side with the main executable;
"AcroRd32Info.exe" this file is what causes explorer to generate the thumbnails and is triggered only when the mouse hovers over an acrobat file.

With Vista Biz, I noticed that in taskmanager the AcroRd32Info.exe is missing. When I attempt to manually run this file, it fails to run with no error message. So my next guess is that some service might be blocking the exe from running or got disable during some tweaking.

I have another system that is identical to mine and brand new. I will test further. If someone can verify if AcroRd32Info.exe runs in there vista taskmanager and see the thumbnails appears or not that would be great.

Thanks
al

Thank you for the helpful tip! In fact, PDF Thumbnail images are easy to fix for Windows XP and they appear on every XP computer I've seen. However, they are GONE in Vista and nobody at Adobe or M$ is addressing this problem.

I had this exact problem... Thumbnail views worked in XP Explorer with 8.0 then the auto update to 8.1 caused them to stop working.

I found a solution that is very simple:

1) Open Adobe
2) Hit "Help" at the top and then "Repair Adobe Installation"
3) Reboot after repair done.

fixed. Hope this helps.

Doesn't work for me.

I've been having this same problem. I have found a way to manually generate the thumbnail by opening Adobe Reader. Go to File > Open, navigate to the folder where you want to generate thumbnails, and change the view to Extra Large Icons. Once the preview is generated, you will be able to see the thumbnails in Windows Explorer as well.

Thank you for the lead, Alan!

Unfortunately, I just tried that (Vista Home Ed.). Such a procedure will definitely restore the Adobe icon, because first, the generic notepad icon appeared, then, when restoring the default opening program for .pdf file, the generic red Adobe Reader 8 icon reappeared.

However, I'm not looking for the restoration of the *icon*. I need to see *thumbnail views* of pdf documents in a Vista explorer folder window *without* opening it. This is particularly handy when sifting through CAD drawings which have been printed to pdf file format. You actually see a small drawing when in "Extra Large Icon" mode . . . you do not see the red Adobe icon. (I do not bother with the Vista "Preview Pane" layout, because it's a huge waste of screen space and because I don't see pdf previews there either)

What maddening about this is the fact that I used to see the thumbnails, just as I easily see thumbnails of .bmp, .jpg, .wma & .mpeg/.mpg visual formats . . . until I "upgraded" from Reader 7 or 8.0 to 8.1.1. Every other Win XP Home ed. computer I have seen in my office also shows thumbnails of pdf document contents.

So this is an Adobe problem, as far as I'm concerned. I've exhausted all remedies, from ground up Reader re-installs, to registry purges to cleaning and rebuilding thumbnail caches to Foxit pdf reader and it's downloadable preview handler. Moral of the story: If it's an Adobe software product *and* if it ain't broke, *don't* fix it!

But many thanks, anyway! Your suggestion was definitely worth a try!

I had a similar problem and solved it easily.
I right-clicked on the file and replaced adobe reader with another program like Notepad using open with... choose program and choosing another program. That replaced the icon with notepad's icon (which is temporarily wrong). Then, I redid that step and brought back adobe reader and lo and behold, the icon reappeared.

OK, I unstalled Reader, deleted the program directory & reinstalled a ground-up version 8.0.0.

No thumbnails in Vista explorer View > Extra Large or Large icon mode

>>>In regedit, what value do you get under Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf? the "Default" key should read "AcroExch.Document". I have noticed that this is not always the case. May be the problem?

Had to take ownership and extend permissions for .pdf, values are as follows:

(Default) = AcroExch.Document
Content Type = application/pdf

This key exports as follows:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf]
"Content Type"="application/pdf"
@="AcroExch.Document"

Well, no thumbnails. Guess I'll stick with 8.0.0 & leave it alone for now. Bummer.

Interesting . . . I get an error message if I even click on the .pdf folder:

".pdf cannot be opened."
"An error is preventing this key from being opened."
"Details: Access is denied."

I cannot even export the .pdf key in order to peek inside, I get the following error message:

"The selected branch does not exist. Make sure the correct path is given."

Also, I cannot delete the key:

"Cannot delete .pdf: error while deleting key."

Any ideas? Uninstall Reader, try to fix registry, reinstall up to 8.0 (but not 8.1.1)?

In regedit, what value do you get under Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf? the "Default" key should read "AcroExch.Document". I have noticed that this is not always the case. May be the problem?