Video Thumbnails Only Are Disappearing in Windows Media Center on Second Hard Drive Only

I purchased a new HP dv9700t Pavilion Notebook recently.

Configuration is below:

- HP Pavilion dv9700t Entertainment CTO NB
- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
- Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T9300 (2.50 GHz, 6 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
- 17.0" WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050)
- 3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- 50% OFF 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS!!
- FREE Upgrade to HP Imprint (Radiance) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone
- Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth(TM)
- 240GB 7200RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (120GB x 2)
- LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- High Capacity 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- System Recovery DVD with Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
- Microsoft(R) Works 9.0

I have a large number of movies stored on my second drive (60% full) in several folders. I have been having a problem with my thumbnails disappearing in Windows Media Center (WMC) in these folders. All the thumbnails can be seen in Explorer. They are missing in WMC only.

I have tracked it down that some of the thumbnails will sometimes reappear but will disappear again when I am watching a video and back out (in WMC) to start another video. It doesn't affect all the videos in the folder just almost all of them. It also doesn't seem to be related to what type of file the video is as well. On my primary drive in another movie folder all the thumbnails are present.

I tried clearing WMC and going through the setup, no effect.

I also made visible the hidden file in the folder with the thumbnail settings in it and deleted it. It had no effect either. I tried accessing the global thumbnail storage file through Disk Manager for the second drive. The ‘thumbnail” choice isn’t a selection on the second drive.

I have searched the net for solutions to similar problems. Someone mentioned "Perceived File Types" having been altered in the Registry from some other program installation. I originally had the K-Lite Full Codec Pack installed. I uninstalled it and replaced it with the CCCP Codec Pack because the author had indicated it had a "Perceived File Type Association" option in the setup. This had no effect. I haven't used a Nero program either.

I have another video folder on my primary drive and there is no problem in WMC with any of its thumbnails. I tried moving a whole folder from the second drive to the primary. All the thumbnails worked fine when in the primary drive. I then deleted the second drive’s folder and move it back from the primary. The thumbnails were still missing.

I think the problem is specific to my second drive only.

If anyone who has dual hard drives installed has had a similar problem and has had success in fixing it, I would appreciate their input. The problem is not a big deal but it is very annoying. I have contacted HP tech support several times and they have been useless.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

 

Mmmmmm....thats wierd.... Now you mentioned it I just checked my second hard drive (D also) in Media Center on my DV9774ca because I know I could see all my thumbnails a few weeks ago when I was using Media Center. These days I have been using Media Player instead for the past few weeks. So I just went to Media Center and all my folders with video and movie (.avi...Xvid stuff) is now no thumbnails!

The only thing I have done new is iinstall SP1 about 2 weeks back.

I haven't tried to figure it out.

 

I haven't been able to link the problem to any particular installation or change either. I didn't start to transfer videos to my second drive until the first started getting full a week or so later. It seems they were there for awhile but now I am not sure. And it seems to be somewhat intermittent also. Sometimes some of the thumbnails will reappear and then disappear. I don't understand enough of how the two drives are linked together to speculate on a cause. I don't know if it is possible to be an HP driver of some sort or maybe a Vista bug?

If you make any headway on the problem I would appreciate you posting your discoveries.

It will be interesting to see how many people with dual drives are experiencing the same problem. Hopefully they will post.

Thanks

 

Does anyone else with dual hard drives on their dv9700t have this problem?

 

Canyon - Greetings - several of us here have a similar problem (and please don't yell at me for a thread hijack!): when we open a folder containing videos on either an external hdd or a second partition, Explorer will crash. The error in Events Mgr (we're all running XP SP2) is something about xvid.

And, just like your problem, it appears to be related to the Thumbnail View. When XP tries to access each video to show a thumbnail, it enounters something it cannot handle, and crashes. A temporary fix is to set each folder to something other than Thumbnail view, and that fix will last as long as the currents Windows session. As soon as you reboot, though, Windows assumes its default behavior (which appears to be Thumbnails for video files), and the crashing starts over again. Google has not been helpful, although the error appears to be relatively common.

I am not familiar with the global thumbnail storage file which you mentioned, so I assume this is for Vista only? The system I support (I work at an Helpdesk) uses XP SP2 so we're all familiar with clearing the iconcache.db in XP and logging off/back on to fix corrupted icons.

Anyways, no attempt to hijack, and I will continue to monitor this thread for a possible solution to our problem here.

 

Thanks JellyGeo for your reply.

Explorer crashing must be a pain.

Luckily, my thumbnail problem is in WMC only and only on on my second drive. In Explorer on both drives I can access the thumbnails w/o any problems. The Global Thumbnail Storage is new to Vista. Unfortunately I can't access it on my second drive, I can on the primary.

Here is a link to a missing thumbnails in Explorer article. It may be usefull.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FIXMissingThumbnailsForVideosWMVAVIMPGInWindowsExplorer.aspx

 

Hi again.
I spent some time yesterday trying to solve this and Googled a lot too, and still have not figured it out. But since I have tended to use Media PLayer instead then it doesn't bother me these days.
I'll keep checking back too.

 

Thanks for your reply Nilst.