REBUILDING WILDOWS 10 THUMBNAIL DATABASE AND CLEANING THE HARD DRIVE

Sometimes Windows 10 will mess up the thumbnail database. You can do one of two things to fix it, the first is quicker, but does not always work. The second almost always works and you can clean up your drive while you are at it - drive cleaning is recommended every 6 months anyway under average use (don't waste time on programs that clean the drive, use the windows drive cleaner).

 

Click "This Computer".
Open "Local Disk (C)".
Click "View".
Click "Options".
Click "Change folder and search options".
Click "View".
Click on "Always show icons, never thumbnails".
Click "Apply"
Unclick "Always show icons, never thumbnails".
Click "Apply".

If this does not work, try:
Click "This Computer".
Right Click "Local Disk (C)".
Click "Properties".
Click "Disk Cleanup".
Click on "Thumbnails".
Click "OK".

This will take a while as it is deleting a pile of files. For example, I have 1.28gb of thumbnails on my C drive.

NOTE: To get more stuff cleaned up click "cleanup system files".
Click on "Windows Update Cleanup".
It takes a while, but it frees up memory and slightly speeds up drive speed.

You will notice that cleaning the update files will take a very long time, longer than if you cleaned that size of normal files - this is normal. Also try not to do anything when it's cleaning, it really sucks resourced. The time it takes depends on your processor power, drive speed, free memory (why you don't want to have anything running) and if any other maintenance is running in the background (like updates or defrag - you will notice only by the drive being on constantly when not using it if something is working in the background).

Special NOTE: some say not to click on the Temp File option when cleaning the drive - I've not had issues but am told others have had issues with their browser and web pages loading after.