After Creators Update 2 thumbnails cache keeps auto-deleting

FreeBooter · 23 Oct 2017

We are glad to hear your issue has been resolved, thank you for letting us know that all is now well!

MrGutsy · 24 Oct 2017

Just registered here to post this, i am glad i am not the only one.
Ok let me state that first of all this is extremely annoying, i have a total of 24 TB storage on my PC (spread out over 6 HDD's) and it contains tens of thousands of pictures and videos. It takes anywhere around 4-6 hours to generate thumbnails of everything which is necessary for me as i am opening those folders to search for photos/videos i want to edit and anything that is not already cached takes too long.

So before falls creator update and before in every window i have set deny policy for system to delete in explorer folder, if anyone's curious for windows 10 its:
C:\Users"Your Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
So if you rightclick that folder and set Deny permission for system entry for delete and delete subfolders then it doesn't matter what windows maintenance might try because it won't be able to delete any file there.
HOWEVER, after falls creator its not working, even after setting deny policy for SYSTEM as well as every single user the cache still magically disappears every one or two days latter. This is down right broken, why the hell microsoft have to annoy users?
Besides, with 8 TB+ hdds and 2 TB+ ssds is automatic maintenance still a thing? Why the hell it bothers with 100-200 MB data which is thumbnail cache that potentially saves tons of hours?

ylm · 24 Oct 2017

I think I found another solution, actually it's unnecessary to completely disable Automatic Maintenance with the FreeBooter script (post #7). I identified the culprit, it's "SilentCleanup" in Windows Task Scheduler (Microsoft / Windows / DiskCleanup). This task seems crappy, when you manually launch it you'll see your thumbnails disappear. Obviously, we could eventually disable this task but it's not the best setting because we disable all other automatic cleaning tasks (temporary installation files, downloaded program files, Windows updates, memory dump files, etc.).The smartest setting IMHO, it's to disable only the part managing the automatic cleaning of thumbnails cache.

To do that, run Regedit.exe and browse the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Thumbnail Cache

Modify Autoruns DWORD and set its value to 0 and reboot your computer.

Now Automatic Maintenance should no longer delete your thumbnails.

I applied this change 2 days ago and I have no problem since.

Let me know it worked for you, otherwise I'll try to find another fix.

I hope this will help you.

Konally · 24 Oct 2017

Hi, ylm. I just now tried your solution and I can confirm that it works as well. Thanks a lot for the fix

ylm · 24 Oct 2017

Konally said:

Hi, ylm. I just now tried your solution and I can confirm that it works as well. Thanks a lot for the fix

Hi Konally. You're welcome. I'm glad if it works for you :)

madgrok · 25 Oct 2017

ylm said:

To do that, run Regedit.exe and browse the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Thumbnail Cache

Modify Autoruns DWORD and set its value to 0 and reboot your computer.

I confirm, It works. Thx.

Scottyboy99 · 27 Oct 2017

Great suggestions on workarounds. However I believe MS needs to fix this issue by default. 99% of users will be wondering what on earth is going on and most don’t participate in forums to find out about it. My elderly parents are a case example as they didn’t have a clue. So MS should sort this out for the masses, find their QA unbelievable that something like this goes unnoticed. It’s clearly widespread, every single pc I have encountered with fall creators update is doing this.

f14tomcat · 27 Oct 2017

Scottyboy99 said:

Great suggestions on workarounds. However I believe MS needs to fix this issue by default. 99% of users will be wondering what on earth is going on and most don’t participate in forums to find out about it. My elderly parents are a case example as they didn’t have a clue. So MS should sort this out for the masses, find their QA unbelievable that something like this goes unnoticed. It’s clearly widespread, every single pc I have encountered with fall creators update is doing this.

Have you reported it in Feedback? I'm not having the issue.

Scottyboy99 · 28 Oct 2017

Yes, reported on feedback and via Twitter to Microsoft helps. I’m tempted to employ the registry edit to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Thumbnail Cache

across friends and family machines as many of them have all been bringing it up. Are there any negative side effects that anywhere is aware of to changing the DWORD to 0 other than to just prevent the thumbnail cache being deleted and refreshing

windows8thumba · 28 Oct 2017

ylm said:

I think I found another solution, actually it's unnecessary to completely disable Automatic Maintenance with the FreeBooter script (post #7). I identified the culprit, it's "SilentCleanup" in Windows Task Scheduler (Microsoft / Windows / DiskCleanup). This task seems crappy, when you manually launch it you'll see your thumbnails disappear. Obviously, we could eventually disable this task but it's not the best setting because we disable all other automatic cleaning tasks (temporary installation files, downloaded program files, Windows updates, memory dump files, etc.).The smartest setting IMHO, it's to disable only the part managing the automatic cleaning of thumbnails cache.

To do that, run Regedit.exe and browse the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Thumbnail Cache

Modify Autoruns DWORD and set its value to 0 and reboot your computer.

Now Automatic Maintenance should no longer delete your thumbnails.

I applied this change 2 days ago and I have no problem since.

Let me know it worked for you, otherwise I'll try to find another fix.

I hope this will help you.

Tried this but my problem is that the thumbnails would disappear in "real time." I have a folder of around 30,000 pictures. When I scroll down to generate thumbnails, I seem to be able to generate maybe a couple thousand thumbnails and then the earlier thumbnails reset before new ones can be generated. There seems to be a hard limit about the number of thumbnails I could have. I've posted about this problem before (like a long time ago) and it seemed to be fixed, until the windows update brought it back!