Icons vs Thunbmails

[David E. Ross]

Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

Is it possible to have only a selected folder and its subfolders show
thumbnails while the rest of my system shows icons?

I have a folder on one drive dedicated to data. It includes a folder
containing music, some audio-only and some with video. I use Video LAN
(VLC) to play these files. If I set the folder for thumbnails, I see
VLC icons for the authio-only files and an image of the performers for
the vidoe files. However, that setting propogates to my desktop,
causing Word documents to show thumbnails of their first pages. On the
desktop, I want to see the icon for Word and not thumbnails.

[Newyana2]

Post by David E. Ross
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
Is it possible to have only a selected folder and its subfolders show
thumbnails while the rest of my system shows icons?
I have a folder on one drive dedicated to data. It includes a folder
containing music, some audio-only and some with video. I use Video LAN
(VLC) to play these files. If I set the folder for thumbnails, I see
VLC icons for the authio-only files and an image of the performers for
the vidoe files. However, that setting propogates to my desktop,
causing Word documents to show thumbnails of their first pages. On the
desktop, I want to see the icon for Word and not thumbnails.

I don't have a definitive answer, but as I recall, Win7 is partially
broken. Win7 can be standardized by deleting all
of the existing shell bags keys and setting the AllFolders key the
way you want it. But then changing any view in one folder can
screw things up. In Win10, even changing by hovering over view
style options can break things. The last time this was truly fixable
was in XP.

And then if you change your monitor resolution, whatever adjustments
you've made are lost because they're set by display size.

[VanguardLH]

Post by David E. Ross
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
Is it possible to have only a selected folder and its subfolders show
thumbnails while the rest of my system shows icons?
I have a folder on one drive dedicated to data. It includes a folder
containing music, some audio-only and some with video. I use Video LAN
(VLC) to play these files. If I set the folder for thumbnails, I see
VLC icons for the authio-only files and an image of the performers for
the vidoe files. However, that setting propogates to my desktop,
causing Word documents to show thumbnails of their first pages. On the
desktop, I want to see the icon for Word and not thumbnails.

Unsure if this works, but try this:

- In Windows Explorer, right-click on your media folder.
- In the context menu, select Properties.
- Select the Customize tab.
- Optimize that folder for Music in the drop-down list.
- Enable the option to apply the template to subfolders.
- Click Apply.

In Windows Explorer, and under view options, you can select to see the
items listed with details, icons, thumbnails, etc. However, make sure
you do NOT enable the "Apply to folders" option as that reflects the
layout you selected to all those type of folders, not just the one you
changed.

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/184497-windows-file-explorer-undesirable-view-change-behavior.html

That user notes changing the view layout on a General type folder has a
side effect of changing the layout view on all General type folders.
Perhaps the C:\users\<youracct>\desktop folder is a General type. After
changing your media folder to a Music type folder, see if "Apply to all
folders" still affects your desktop, or just to your media folders.

If you change a view layout for a folder, make sure you don't delete the
desktop.ini where the preference is stored. It is a system-tagged file,
so you need to enable seeing system files in Windows Explorer. If you
already enabled seeing system files in Windows Explorer, and you delete
files, perhaps you are deleting the desktop.ini file, like hitting
Ctrl-A to select all files and then hit the Del key. Cleanup tools
might also delete desktop.ini files.