03.30.2008

Changing Thumbnail Size in Windows XP

This simple tutorial will walk you through the steps to configure you thumbnails to be bigger than the default size. Alternatively, you could make them smaller as well, if you would like to fit more on a page but still have the thumbnail view. This will only change it for one user as well, so if other people use your machine, it will not affect them. Keep in mind that if the thumbnails are getting made bigger than they should they may distort after a certain size. Let’s get started.

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This is the default size of the thumbnail images in windows XP.

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We will be modifying the registry to make this change. To open the registry editor, click on Start and select Run (Please note that my start menu says TeamTutorials instead of “start” – Learn how to change that by following http://teamtutorials.com/windows-tutorials/changing-your-start-button-text)

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Type in “regedit” (without the quotes) and press enter to launch the Registry Editor.

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This is the default view of the registry. Click the expand button (the plus signs) next to the proper keys to navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Once you are there, click on Explorer instead of click the expand sign in the left pane and the right pane will fill up with keys.

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You editor should now look like the above picture. Look for a key called ThumbnailSize. If one does not exist (like the picture above) we will need to create it. If it does exist you can skip this step.

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Right-click on any whitespace located in the right pane, hover over new, and select DWORD Value. This will create a key in the right pane. Name it ThumbnailSize. Make sure you have no spaces in the name.

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Once you double-click on the value a box will pop up that looks like the picture above. You can now enter the value you wish to use. You can select either decimal or hexadecimal, doesn’t really matter, except the number limits are different. If you are using decimal, the number can be 32 (smallest) to 256 (largest) which converts to 20 (smallest) and 100 (largest) if you are using hexadecimal. You can now close out of your windows you have open and check your work.

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Smallest:
Hex – 20
Decimal – 32

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Windows Default:
Hex – 64
Decimal – 100

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Largest:
Hex – 100
Decimal – 256

This concludes this tutorial. I hope you were able to follow it with little trouble. Please comment with problems and suggestions for new tutorials. Thank you for reading.

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Comments

  1. avaloncraven on April 15, 2008 at 6:51 am

    This is great tutorial.I even did not know this was possible.For many years i had cruel for nothing.Thank you teamtutorials

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  2. steve on June 12, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Excellent! Who knew you could do this? Looked intimidating at first glance but was super easy. Thanks for the help!

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  3. Web Design Romania on October 22, 2008 at 10:11 am

    this is good one
    thanks

    [Reply]

  4. Abram on May 16, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    Thanks, just what I was looking for. Very understandable instructions.

    [Reply]

  5. Asim on July 9, 2009 at 3:16 am

    very usefull!
    Thank you teamtutorials!

    [Reply]

  6. zaz on August 30, 2009 at 6:23 am

    Thank you!Very useful!

    [Reply]

  7. Connie on November 8, 2009 at 7:41 am

    awesome, thanks for this tutorial, i will do it to my computer windows xp

    [Reply]

  8. Asif on November 17, 2009 at 8:05 am

    Thanks! Great instructions, exactly what I was looking for.

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  9. David on November 27, 2009 at 1:30 am

    This works great. I was wondering if there is a way to make explorer build a thumbnail of every avi on a drive or directory with out slowly scrolling thru the directory?
    I have a drive with thousands of avis and scrolling thru the directory is slow.

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  10. koko on December 16, 2009 at 5:54 am

    wow, that is very nice , thanks :) ))))

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  11. Gregor on December 29, 2009 at 6:54 am

    You could add as an extra that the quality of the thumbnail (resulting of course in different render times) can be set with another DWORD “ThumbnailQuality” between 50 and 100

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  12. web design brisbane on January 20, 2010 at 3:04 am

    Now my folders & image thumbnails are nice & big, but the pictures i have on the folders get really pixelated. The source pictures themselves are a nice size, yet windows renders them small then stretches them.

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  13. Anonymous on February 4, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    You could also just use TweakUI from Microsoft. It has a slider bar to select thumbnail size and quality.

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  14. Mike Skerritt on February 10, 2010 at 9:05 am

    Very nice… I’ve been wondering how to do this.

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  15. Darrel on May 30, 2010 at 10:03 pm

    Excellent tutorial.

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  16. Randy on July 10, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    Very straight forward, thank you.

    [Reply]

  17. Zege on July 27, 2010 at 3:05 pm

    EXACTLY what I was looking for. Tank you so much for publishing this, and thanks to Gregor for the tip on quality.

    [Reply]