How to Disable and Enable (Reset) Thumbnails in Windows XP?

To Reset Thumbnail Generation for Picture Files

To disable thumbnails for picture files in Windows Explorer, simply issue the following command in the Command Prompt window. To open the Command Prompt window, type "Cmd" in Start->Run box.

    regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll

After running the above command, all photos and images will lose their thumbnails.
To enable the preview thumbnail for pictures again, run the following command:

    regsvr32 shimgvw.dll

To Reset Thumbnail Generation for Video or Movie Files

To disable video media thumbnail preview in Windows Explorer, simply issue the following command in the Command Prompt window. To open the Command Prompt window, type "Cmd" in Start->Run box.

    regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

Once the above command is run, the thumbnail preview will be disabled for all video, movie and other media files. That includes: AVI, WMA, WMV, ASF, and WAV files.

To enable video media thumbnail again, use this command:

    regsvr32 shmedia.dll