Thumbnails Missing in Vista Explorer Large & Extra Large View

On Vista x64, running 32 bit explorer thus:

Start -> Run:

%windir%\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate, /root, c:

Opens 32 bit explorer and the thumbnails work, so I guess 64bit = no thumbnails, period. x(

Interestingly, once the thumbnails have been generated by viewing the folder with Explorer 32 bit, they remain visible to the native Explorer 64 bit.

I'm using Vista 64 Ultimate, Acrobat Reader 9.0

Ran regsvr32 on both both the DLLs mentioned above
Ran repair from in Acrobat
Rebooted

aaaaand.... Still no thumbnails :(

Thank you very much Jim Salsano! I was checking on this thread again and noticed your post mentioning that my suggestion had helped fix your thumbnail problem. I was about to respond with a congratulations and some frustration that it did not fix my problem. That's when I noticed that you ran your repair _after_ running regsvr32 on those DLLs. I made my multiple attempts to repair _before_ running regsvr32, and it did not fix my problem. Apparently this bit of ordering is important, because my thumbnails are back now! :-)

Hopefully they'll stay for a while...

For what it's worth, a clean, virgin install of Reader 9 on a clean, virgin install of Windows 7 64-bit beta produces...no thumbnails at all. Zero. zilch. Thumbnails and previews generally in Windows 7 are more convenient and better than Vista. But click on a pdf file and you just get 'no preview available'.

Reader also cannot update its own updater, which crashes, and which apparently is a prerequisite to updating Reader itself.

Since Win7 is beta, you can't demand anything of anybody; everybody is off the hook for a while. But it's unfortunate that while there are plenty of good improvements in Win 7, apparently cooperation between Microsoft and Adobe is not one of them.

Fortunately my thumbs on Vista32 (where I have CS3) still work, although even there, with Acrobat 8 pro, they disappeared for a while last year.

It's truly idiotic that in a world where PDF is as universal as any file format; where jpg, png, gif previews unfailingly work; and where so much of the PDF code is publicly available that dozens of free PDF writers are available and Microsoft Office can create PDF -- in such a world, it's ridiculous that Msft doesn't implement its own thumbnail solution. But then, if you don't have Office installed, you can't get previews of Word files either.

Windows 7 mostly rocks, but this part of MSFT's thinking I will NEVER understand. Nor can I understand why Adobe doesn't see that it's in their interest to devote the resources to making this stuff work. Plenty of users bitch about 'reader bloat'. Plenty of users use it only while holding their nose. The easier Adobe makes it to glance at your pdf files and quickly open the one you want, the more people will appreciate the product, and, eventually, the more people will buy the PAY product.

I have Adobe Acrobat 8.1.3 Standard and I had long ago uninstalled Adobe Reader. I have had no thumbnails for some time. Well, tonight I managed to fix mine. I used almost all of the methods listed above, mostly with no success..
--I ran the disk cleanup.
--I ran a registry cleaner. (probably not needed.)
--I ran the Repair from the Control Panel-Programs.
--I tried changing file associations.
None of this worked.
Then
--I opened a command prompt as administrator and searched for the two files CoreyCohen mentioned above using a /s to find the subdirectory.
--I ran regsvr32 on each of them.
--I then ran the repair from within Acrobat.
--I rebooted and the thumbnails came back!
--I am happy.

I hope this helps someone else!

How do I create a list index instead of thumbnails with adobe reader 9?

I have Vista Home Premium 64 bit. I USED to have thumbnails showing up, but all of a sudden in the past week or so, they disappeared! I have not done anything with Adobe, but I HAVE installed a lot of Microsoft updates! I suspect that one of those is probably at fault. My older Dell is almost useless right now because of a corrupt SP3 update that I installed and CAN'T REMOVE! I have tried several of the "fixes" on this forum, but nothing works. Maybe I will try uninstalling updates from a few days ago and back. Maybe I will find the culprit that way! If I do, I will post what I found here.

The once missing thumbnail images have reappeared and they display as expected with a more recent version of Adobe Reader version (9.0.0) on my Vista Home (service pack 1) operating system. I think Adobe fixed the problem. Maybe Vista service pack 1 helped, too.

It's hard to determine exactly what caused the thumbnail images to disappear when I first posted here on Nov 2007, but I suspect the problem began with version 8.1.1. I would avoid all reader versions 8.x.x, because once those images disappear, it will be difficult to get them back.

I am also having this problem in 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.

I do not have the "always show icons, never thumbnails" folder option checked. I have attempted to "Repair installation" from within the Adobe products. Thumbnails that have already been generated show up correctly, but documents that do not have thumbnails yet just have the standard Adobe icon. It used to work correctly on this system, but an update (either from Adobe or Microsoft) caused it to quit working. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing Adobe Reader 9.0.0. I have tried installing Adobe Acrobat 9.0 Pro Trial also, and neither worked although the Pro install temporarily made the problem worse.

Prior to installing the Pro Trial, I could cause the thumbnails to be generated by going into the Reader product, Selecting "File->Open", navigating to a directory, and choosing "Large Icons" from the file explorer widget. It would generate the thumbnails _inside_ the Reader product, and they would subsequently be available from the file explorer (for that directory). After the Pro Trial install, not even this worked anymore. I was able to return to the previous behavior starting a privileged command prompt and running regsvr32 on PDFPrevHndlr.dll and PDFShell.dll. Failure to use a privileged command shell will result in an 0x80070005 error when running DllRegisterServer. These two DLLs are obviously involved in the broken behavior. Another missing feature that I believe is clearly related is that the PDF tab is missing when you select "Properties" from the right-button context menu in File explorer.

My best guess is that there's a permissions problem on Windows Vista (perhaps only 64-bit) that prevents the installer from correctly registering the shell extensions, resulting in a complete absence of all file explorer related features. It would be really great if a moderator or someone from Adobe could acknowledge that there seems to be a problem here. I've tried reporting a bug, but I don't have high hopes that it will get noticed.

If you're experiencing a similar problem, please join in with a short comment and let's see if we can't identify whether this problem is Vista specific and/or 64-bit specific so that hopefully someday Adobe will fix it.

Well I am completely confused. But not really, I think.

I DO WANT THE THUMBNAILS. And was not getting them (folder option was appropriately unchecked). I got a clue from these posts to download Reader 9 which I did. I already had Acrobat Pro 9 installed (but no reader).

That gave me the preview I desired. However, when I went back to associating files to Pro (which is what I want) that is when this hiccup occurs.

If I had previously viewed the thumbnail then Pro 9 kept that thumbnail. If I go to to a folder that hasn't been previewed with Reader while it was the associated program of record, then no go.

How weird is that?

And I have paid for PRO and it won't preview? But free reader does? Please someone shoot me an answer before I do that to my laptop.

UGH!