After Creators Update 2 thumbnails cache keeps auto-deleting

windows8thumba said:

I think I may have figured out the problem. I rebuilt the cache and opened C:\\Users\\<YOUR NAME>\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Explorer, to see how the thumbnail cache folder increase in size as I started to rebuild thumbnails in various folders.

In the beginning I could see the size of the folder and the number of files in that folder increase nicely as I rebuild thumbnails. However, the thumbcache_96.db file (which for me seems to be the picture thumbnails) tops off at around 349 MB. That's when the generated thumbnails for picture files start to reset in real-time to make way for new thumbnails. The other file "thumbcache_1280.db" stores thumbnails for video files and that one still increases in size fine, although I don't now what the upper limit for that file is (mine is at only 137 MB now).

So there you have it. I think there's some sort of thing preventing the thumbnail cache file from increasing in size. Is there a fix for this?

I actually rolled back the update and I saw the same thing happening. Not really sure what's going on now.

thumbcache_96.db (view as large icons for picture files) seems to have a hard limit of 349 MB
thumbcache_1280.db (view as large icons for video files) doesn't seem to have a hard limit because I've reached 457 MB so far.

What are these folders? whenever Windows refresh/rebuild thumbnails they would appear in one specific hard drive. Any ideas why?

Konally said:

Yes, automatic maintenance still starts, but you don't have to wait for it if you don't want to. You can go to 'Control Panel,' 'System and Security' and 'Security and Maintenance.' Then click on the 'Change Security and Maintenance settings.' In the area where it says Maintenance messages check Automatic maintenance.

After that, go back to the 'Security and Maintenance' tab, then on the Maintenance drop-down you can start automatic maintenance. It's been working for me for 4 days.

Thanks. Tonight I left the pc alone again and it did auto maintenance. Windows.old was deleted and I got my 20 odd gigs back. With the registry edit enabled I then checked my thumbnails and they were all still there and didn’t need to redraw. So thank you for pointing towards this. Seems a perfect fix, at least for what was causing me frustration

Scottyboy99 said:

Thanks. Tonight I left the pc alone again and it did auto maintenance. Windows.old was deleted and I got my 20 odd gigs back. With the registry edit enabled I then checked my thumbnails and they were all still there and didn’t need to redraw. So thank you for pointing towards this. Seems a perfect fix, at least for what was causing me frustration

Thank you Scottyboy99 for the "perfect fix" . I would never have published this workaround if I hadn't tested and verified it myself before. Actually it's not perfect, it's just a little trick I found until Microsoft corrects this issue with an update because it's still there anyway.

I had the very same problem. All icon caches went to the "thumbcachetodelete" sub-folder.
The fix that worked for me is go to settings-> Apps and Features and uninstall the XBox app installed after the fall update (There are three Xbox apps in my case. Only one of them can be uninstalled).
Hope it helps

cedricyu said:

I had the very same problem. All icon caches went to the "thumbcachetodelete" sub-folder.
The fix that worked for me is go to settings-> Apps and Features and uninstall the XBox app installed after the fall update (There are three Xbox apps in my case. Only one of them can be uninstalled).
Hope it helps

Strange that how you're saying the Xbox App controls the icon thumbnail cache?!?! it wasn't my problem as I already had a lot of bloatware including the Xbox app uninstalled anyways. It has stopped resetting for me now anyways after something in this thread must have finally fixed it.

I'm a professional photographer and this has been happening to me since the fall update. Extremely frustrating to say the least. I absolutely cannot deal with it. It happened in windows 7 and I resolved it by denying permissions to all the listed users of the explorer folder.

Stop/Prevent Windows 7 From Deleting Thumbnail Cache

The permissions settings are different in 10 and I couldn't get it to work. I finally did determine that is is one of the tasks in the automatic maintenance. I checked that all the thumbs were good then ran the maintenance, and all the thumbs had to rebuild. So I know that's what's doing it on my machine. I'm going to try the regedit to disable the auto maintenance. But I'd rather deny the permissions to the folder if anyone can help with that. Also I would like to know exactly what the auto maint does. I suspect it runs disk cleanup, which has a box to tick for deleting thumbs. Is there a way to set defaults for disk cleanup? When I run it, I can uncheck the thumnail box, but it always is checked again when I open it.

I honestly would do the registry edit. I was apprehensive at first and worried about side effects. But I can say that ever since I did it the problem has been solved and everything is ok. I think it’s unaccetable of MS to ignore a major bug but sadly it’s typical of them. I don’t think they will ever fix it so we have to find these workarounds unfortunately!