Thumbnails Missing in Vista Explorer Large & Extra Large View

The PDF-Xchange is a real 64bit app. If you have a look at your task manager when it's running you won't see the "*32" next to "PDFXCview.exe". You will see it next to all the acrobat files, though. (And all of Microsoft's Office 2007 apps too...)

I've got the FoxIt preview handler working on this Vista 64 machine, so that seems possible to do.

I've been trying to track down how this thumbnail problem works, simply because I'm not happy with having to do computer voodoo to get something to work. :) No real luck so far, except for noticing that a 64bit app called "dllhost" runs while the PDF thumbnails are being generated. I'm guessing that it hosts the 32 bit thumbnail generator, but I really don't know.

Regretfully, I find myself moving further away from Acrobat due to the 64 bit issues. PDF-Xchange never shows that blank area, no scrollbar, etc, problem that Acrobat does on 64 bit. Bluebeam's PDF Revu handles most editing and includes a print to PDF driver. It's kind of sad to see Adobe lose ground simply by not fixing problems.

And I wonder if one of the reasons the PDF-Xchange trick works is that IT installs to the 64-bit program files folder (even though I assume it's a 32-bit program). RealPlayer also installs to the 64-bit folder on Windows 7 64-bit, although I KNOW it's a 32-bit program. When I first saw it doing this, I feared none of its plug-ins etc would work--but they work fine.

Makes me wonder if the simplest hack would simply be to force Reader9 to install to the 64-bit program files (the installer does give you the option to change the default destination). But that experiment will have to wait for another time.

At any rate, I can confirm that the PDF-Xchange trick does work on Windows 7 64-bit as well, so thanks, Chris, for, um, giving us a thumbnail preview of that trick. Well, for MOST pdf files, anyway. I found a few that wouldn't show thumbnails, but that may be a function of what program created them and how. (These are not MY pdfs - they're just accumulated research from all over on all subjects. If it were just things I had created with Creative Suite, I would just use Bridge. But the vast majority of PDF use is by business and office users on business and office computers, who have neither Bridge nor any other Adobe product except Reader and/or Acrobat. I would think Adobe would want to keep them happy.)

'Thumbnails' is actually a bit of a misnomer in both Vista and Win7. There's no longer a 'thumbnails' choice among explorer views. Thumbnails are created automatically for filetypes where a preview handler is registered, and they show up in most of the View modes (though not in details, thankfully).

The actual preview function for PDF (as opposed to a generated thumbnail) still does not work, but I'm not surprised. I do not remember if it ever worked in Vista, but my hunch is not. I do not by default keep previews on (slows things down), and in Vista it takes so ridiculously many steps to get to the preview button that you may as well have opened the file. In Windows 7 it's a one-click button on the toolbar.

The next time I boot to Vista (which is on another drive, and is 32-bit, and does have CS3 unlike my Win7 business drive, but which I almost never boot to any more), I'll refresh my memory by checking out whether 'preview' works there.

You know, I'd like to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt, but what you're describing makes me think Reader 9.1 is doing something simple: It's using the 32 bit Explorer Open/Save box. Essentially it's doing the same thing that alexjm describes a few messages back: on a 64 bit Vista machine, creating thumbnails works in the 32 bit file Explorer, and those thumbnails will then be displayed in the 64 bit file Explorer. (Or at least that's what I've seen it do.)

That sounds interesting. If I have time this weekend, I'll try it in Windows 7 64-bit and report back.(No Acrobat in this installation; that's on the Vista partition; my Win7 is Reader-only).

In the meantime, version 9.1 of Reader has made some progress. In Win7 64-bit, any folder that you browse using Reader's own Open/Save dialog box will now automatically generate the thumbs for any PDF you selected from that dialog box, whether you actually opened it or not. They will be viewable in either 32- or 64-bit Explorer thereafter. Although in this case (I'm guessing here) you'll LOSE the thumbs if you do a Windows disk cleanup.

I've found a method to bring the PDF thumbnails back to the 64 bit Explorer that has worked three times on two different Vista 64 bit systems, and lets you continue to use Adobe's products. I hope this helps someone out:

1. 
   
2. Uninstall Adobe Reader / any other readers. (We tried leaving Acrobat Pro 8 installed on one machine and this still worked... no guarantees though!)
3. 
   
4. Install PDF-XChange Viewer (Free), but do NOT allow it to become the default PDF viewer. You can get this from http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer/
5. 
   
6. Run PDF-XChange Viewer. Again, do NOT allow it to become the default PDF viewer.
7. 
   
8. Check for updates using the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu item
9. 
   
10. Install the shell extensions update it offers, and close PDF-XChange Viewer
11. 
    
12. Install Adobe Reader 9.
13. 
    
14. Run the disk cleaner and remove all thumbnails
15. 
    
16. Reboot
17. 
    

It seems like a lot of steps, but as I said above, it has worked three times on two different Vista 64 machines.

If you let PDF-XChange Viewer become the default PDF viewer, everything seems to be okay for a little while, but my experience was that the thumbnails stopped being updated.

Good luck!

Hi,
I'm using Window XP. I don't really know what it's missing, here's the problem: when trying to open the pdf document as usual (i.e. on desktop), it appeared as "no preview available," then I open a blank pdf (start, program, adobe 9) & open the file from there, it works.
Please help.
I've uninstalled & installed a few times already.
Thanks again.

Almost identical situation in Windows 7 64-bit:

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run regsvr on both DLLs
- no thumbnails

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do a 'repair install' of Reader 9 from control panel > programs and features
- still no thumbnails

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run 32-bit explorer:
- thumbnails YES.
- Previews, NO. You get an error message referencing PDFPrevHndlr.dll (Explorer's preview feature has been somewhat changed and enhanced in Win7 vs. Vista, so this is not a real surprise.)

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run regular (64-bit) explorer on directories where thumbs were generated by 32-bit explorer:
- thumbnails still YES.
- Previews still NO. You get a generic message 'this file can't be previewed'

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btw: for those getting a regsvr error msg, try enclosing the whole file path in quotes, e.g.:
-- type CMD in start search
-- r-click on CMD.exe (should be top result), choose 'run as administrator'
-- this opens CMD in system folder
-- type your command and press ENTER. The whole command line will look like this:
C:\Windows\system32>regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\PDFPrevHndlr.dll"