Software & Apps > File Types How to Repair Damaged or Corrupted Thumbs.db Files By Tim Fisher Tim Fisher Facebook Twitter Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability Emporia State University Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the VP and General Manager of Lifewire. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on June 17, 2022 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email File Types File Types Apps Windows MS Office Linux Google Drive Backup & Utilities Design Cryptocurrency What to Know Open folder with damaged thumbs.db file > right-click file > Delete.To recreate file, select View > Thumbnails from the menu in the folder from which you deleted the thumbs.db file. Doing this will initiate the Thumbnails view and will automatically create a new copy of the file. This article explains how to repair a damaged or corrupted thumbs.db file. How to Repair Damaged or Corrupted Thumbs.db Files Sometimes, one or more of these corrupted files can cause problems in Windows when navigating around folders with multimedia content, or they could be the cause of error messages like this kernel32.dll error: Explorer caused an invalid page fault in module Kernel32.dll Repairing thumbs.db files is a pretty simple task considering Windows will regenerate the DB file when the particular folder it's contained in is viewed in a special way. Open the folder that you suspect the damaged or corrupted thumbs.db file to be contained in. Locate the file. If you can't see the file, your computer may be configured to not show hidden files. If that's the case, change the folder options to allow the display of hidden files and protected operating system files. See How Do I Show Hidden Files and Folders in Windows? for instructions. Once you locate the thumbs.db file, right click it and choose Delete. If you can't delete the file, you may need to change the folder view. To do this, select View and then choose either Tiles, Icons, List, or Details. Depending on the version of the Windows you're using, some of these options may vary slightly. To recreate the file, select View and then Thumbnails from the menu in the folder from which you deleted the thumbs.db file. Doing this will initiate the Thumbnails view and will automatically create a new copy of the file. Tips Not all versions of Windows use the thumbs.db file. The thumbnail database thumbcache_xxxx.db might instead be centrally located in this folder: %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up! Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit