Tech Tip of the Week

Disabling space-eating ‘thumbs.db’ files

Most people using Windows XP must have seen a small file in some directories called thumbs.db. This file is a cache of the thumbnail pictures in a directory. It speeds up the display of thumbnails when you are viewing a folder in Thumbnail view.

Although the space occupied by this file is very small in most cases, if you have a lot of thumbs.db files littering your hard drive, you may be able to save some valuable space by removing them. Follow the steps given below to turn off the creation of this file and delete the thumbs.db files that are already there on your hard drive.

To turn this feature off, do the following:

1) Open My Computer
2) Click on Tools
3) Click on Folder Options
4) Click on the View Tab
5) Place a check in the option “Do not cache thumbnails”
6) Click Ok
7) Close My Computer

In order to remove all the thumbs.db files, search for them using Windows search and delete them.