Sick as a Parrot (SaaP)

Mac_Howard · Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:26 am Post subject: Thumbs.db - Don't worry!

Moving SaaP across to my new Windows 7 PC I was worried when I saw a file in the game folder called thumbs.db. I wracked my brain to remember why I had included such a file in the game. Eventually I removed it to discover the game worked perfectly well without it.What's more, when I removed it reappeared next time I looked in the folder.

Where the hell had that come from? Was it a virus or malware?

So I googled it. It's apparently a file introduced into folders by Windows XP associated with displaying a thumbnail icon when you look at file lists in Windows Explorer. It apparently improves the speed of the display of the files in a folder.

Phew!

You can apparently remove the feature if you wish though that will merely result in slowing down the display of folders/files if you do.
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Author of SaaP

Neil · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 6:51 am Post subject:

Surprised you didn't know about this before, using XP!

Mac_Howard · Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:27 am Post subject:

Neil · Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:07 am Post subject:

Under XP, you generally only get a thumbs.db file if you change the Explorer view to either Thumbnails or Filmstrip (the latter only generally appears in Picture folders.
You might also miss seeing it if the Folder setting 'Show hidden files and folders' is turned off, though if you zipped a folder in this state, you might be warned of hidden files if you press CTRL+A or menu option 'Select All'

Mac_Howard · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 4:54 am Post subject:

Neil · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 7:39 am Post subject:

I think it can depend on who you buy the PC from!

IE, different manufacturers can set up different default behaviours for the way that Explorer windows behave.
I think that Win7 uses Thumbnails by default though!
This can affect Windows XP folders. For example I have directories shared on my XP PC, and if I access them from Win7 that is using thumbnails, then a thumbs.db file is generated in that folder, even though I am using 'List' or 'Details' view in XP!
That is true of course whichever OS the other PC accessing the share is, be it XP/Vista/7 if you switch view type to thumbnails

Mac_Howard · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:26 am Post subject:

Yes, the default was set to thumbnails but I've now set to list. I hadn't seen folder options buried inside the 'organise" menu.

I've not seen anything yet in Win 7 that convinces me it's a must upgrade. This PC is very much faster than my XP laptop - but then it has 16 times the memory and about 4 times the processing power - but I've not seen anything from Win 7 that impressed me over XP. I even think the rendering of text is less clean than XP. On this board for example and websites in general. Whether that's similar to the problem I had with Vista - which is still there in Win 7 if I remove my fix ie still chunky text on links - I'm not sure. Otherwise I don't see a lot of difference between Win 7 and XP.

The speed, however, is a real bonus though in fairness my XP laptop is more than 5 years old and probably needs the OS reinstalling. Georgie will be happy with it though - she only really uses MySpace, MSN and a photo library. Oh and she knocks my bandwidth with YouTube videos

Hmm. Just looking at the text in the preview. Definitely less clean and chunkier than with the XP laptop. Could be the browser but I'm using Firefox on both machines and pretty much the same (default) settings.
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Author of SaaP

Mac_Howard · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 4:37 am Post subject: