What Gives with MICROSOFT File Sharing BS???

[metrologist]

I'm getting worn out with MS and not letting me move or delete files. I have to do that constantly at work every day, move files around on my PC and network, and I constantly have to fight Windows messages:

Cannot delete thumbs.db. Why has MS created such a stupid file anyway? Can't it just go away permanently and never ever return for anybody ever on any network for all eternity? I hate it! Cannot delete thumbs.db.

A file is in use! Cannot delete folder, or rename it, or anything it. I don't get it. All my applications are closed and still cannot rename folder. If I wait an hour, maybe then I can rename my folder. But I need to rename it NOW!. NOW! HOW NOW BROWN COW???

I'm about to go Dr. Sues...

Anyway, when it locks on my PC, I get GREAT satisfaction our of just yanking the power cord. That is the FASTEST way to recover and rename that folder. PERIOD! no better way.

If it's on the network, it's just lucky the server room is locked, but I'm tempted to hit the main circuit breaker panel next time. I'll yank the cord on MY PC and go to a coworker and ask THEM to rename the folder.

I just want to move and rename some stinking files and folders, MICROSOFT. Can you handle it without making it such a chore?

BTW, why havent you removed the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v functionality yet? That's your mantra, to make things less convenient and make them harder to use...

[gnif]

why havent you removed the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v functionality yet?

Really? That is the first time I have ever seen anyone complain about copy & paste shortcuts. I use it religiously. That's like saying, 'why haven't you removed the keyboard yet'... oh wait, they tried that with Windows 8

Thumbs.db is a cache of re-sampled images in the folder for preview, I hate it too, but unfortunately there is little you can do about it.

[mariush]

You probably have search and indexing service enabled .. disable that. disable image and media previews in windows explorer as well. In fact,  stop using windows explorer and use something like total commander and you'll see your productivity increase.

See https://www.sitepoint.com/switch-off-thumbs-db-in-windows/

Ensure you’re logged in using an administrator account.
Hit Win+R, type gpedit.msc in the Run window and click OK. The Local Group Policy Editor will be launched.

Navigate through the tree to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > then either Windows Explorer (Windows Vista/7) or File Explorer (Windows .

Local Group Policy Editor
In the right-hand pane, double-click “Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files”.

Select Enabled (don’t make my mistake of choosing “Disabled” — you’re enabling the switching off of Thumbs.db. Not particularly intuitive, Microsoft!)

[rdl]

I have a checklist, about two pages long, of stuff I have to change in a fresh Windows 7 install before I consider it usable. Turning off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files is on that list.

[Avacee]

You can stop windows creating local thumbs.db - Go to the folder options and tick "Always show icons, never thumbnails"
If it's a corporate network there's a policy setting under Windows Components/File Explorer/Turn Off The Display of Thumbnails And Only Display Icons (+ On Network Folders)
Edit: For a local machine you can use gpedit to edit your own local policy (nm see Mariush's post)

ProcessExplorer can help you track down which program has a file lock. Ironically it's sometimes Explorer.exe locking thumbs.db.
Yes, I appreciate this isn't ideal and you just want it to work but without that option this is the best this noob can come up with. Sorry.

[Gyro]

I have a checklist, about two pages long, of stuff I have to change in a fresh Windows 7 install before I consider it usable. Turning off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files is on that list.

Care to share your list? 

[rdl]

The thumbs.db files will be "hidden" by default. I've run a Windows Server setup before and always just deleted them there when logged on as administrator. From a remote computer, inability to delete from the server is most likely a permissions problem.

The "icons not thumbnails" setting in Windows Explorer may stop local caching, but I believe Explorer may still create them on remote servers. The gpedit fix will stop it for certain. From my personal setup preferences checklist:

Important Explorer fix for no thumbs.db files on network drives:

Run gpedit.msc and navigate to:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates >Windows Components > Windows Explorer

Double click “Turn off caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files” and Enable
Note: May say “Turn off caching of thumbnail pictures” on 32 bit Windows 7

[tooki]

This is one of the things that always drove me (a primarily Mac user) nuts when using windows PCs at work. On the Mac (like any *nix) you can rename folders and files that are in use, and programs happily go along with this without errors or surprises. Even Microsoft programs handle this properly on the Mac. No idea why Windows struggles with this.

[Sredni]

why havent you removed the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v functionality yet?

Really? That is the first time I have ever seen anyone complain about copy & paste shortcuts.

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. :-)

I use it religiously. That's like saying, 'why haven't you removed the keyboard yet'... oh wait, they tried that with Windows 8

We were talking about OSes, not disasters. :-))
Seriously, about half the time I waste on installing Winduh is about turning off all those 'brilliant' MS features. Indexing, shadow bullshit, the fantastic Mediaplayer (or whatever it's called now) that explores all my USB sticks when the PC is on idle, autoplay, stupid file associations that won't go away, now those sticky windows. Then I have to struggle to bring some form of console out of the deep dark hole it was buried in, possibly installing UnxUtils...
I also move all documents folders away from M$ Windows partition to gain control on MY files.
Yes, M$. They are MINE.

[dmills]

It is a hangover from the FAT file systems that did not use reference counting.

In a unix file system (any of them) a directory entry and the file it points to are separate entities and the file (inode) is reference counted, on FAT (Which originally borrowed from MSDOG which borrowed heavily from CPM) the file name and the list of blocks making up the file live in the same data structure.

IIRC inodes are ref counted, most unix locking is advisory (Obviously there are mutexes and such in the kernel, but that is a slightly different meaning for 'locking').

The effect of this is that while in unix it works like this:

File created and linked to a directory entry (ref count 1) -> file opened (Ref count now 2)->directory entry deleted (Refcount now 1, note program having the file open is keeping the file blocks from being deleted because the refcount is non zero, but the file itself no longer has a name)->file closed (Refcount goes to zero and the file blocks are freed). The nice thing about this is that you can replace a file atomically (rename within a file system is atomic) and a program that has the old one open will continue to see the old file until it closes it.

FAT does not have the reference counting semantics, so the only way to ensure that a program has a consistent view of a file (Particularly an executable that it may need to page in at any time) is to obtain a read lock. I was kind of hoping this was going to be fixed in longhorn (Why else did they bring Cuttler on board?), but it did not happen. This worked in a single user, non multitasking system like DOS, but breaks badly as soon as you add mmap and demand paging.

MS have been adding increasingly hacky workarounds ever since.

[Towger]

why havent you removed the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v functionality yet?

Really? That is the first time I have ever seen anyone complain about copy & paste shortcuts. I use it religiously.

It is not a patch on Norton Commander for copying files.  I can only assume there is a patent stoping them from implementing a wildcard file section feature.

Record/file locking on Windows is broken and always has been.  Back in the days of Novell etc you could happly run a good sized multi user database just using the OS's record locking.
The same on Windows will eventually lead disaster.

[metrologist]

The thumbs files are hidden, but get created in every folder I think that has an image type of file. If you set Explorer to show hidden and system files, you will see them everywhere, and if you select one and try to delete it, MS give you a finger.

It's usually Explorer that won't let go of the file, or Windows just has a flag set or something.

BTW, eliminating copy paste shortcuts is just in sarcasm, but THAT is exactly what I expect from MICROSOFT! It's too convenient, it must be eliminated. Like how easy it used to be to switch from preview or different list/details/tile file views. Now it's clicking though this stupid ribbon and figuring out what icon the new interns fancy. Wait, they weren't using icons anymore, right?

The other problem with deleting files? I make a PDF, want to change something so now I can't delete the PDF and just have to make a new one with a different name, and wait for some time later to delete the file. It's utterly asinine!

[rrinker]

 Never had a problem deleting thumbs.db or other system files - I regularly wipe my temp folder and sure, it prompts youa nd says this is a system file blah blah blah, just do it and it deletes it with no further prompting.

 How anyone could prefer using the mouse to click copy and paste instead of simple control-c/control-v is beyond me. Someone at Microsoft got a clue, with Powershell in Windows 10, CNTL-C and CNTL-V now work, no more of that idiotic mark, copy, and having to right click to paste.

 Change the view? Right click and select view. No mucking through the ribbon.

[Sredni]

Never had a problem deleting thumbs.db or other system files - I regularly wipe my temp folder and sure, it prompts youa nd says this is a system file blah blah blah, just do it and it deletes it with no further prompting.

Yeah. The best part of this is when you are moving or deleting copying a bunch of Gigabytes of data, start the process and go have a coffee. Only to return ten minutes later to find the progress bar at one fifth and a message saying "Do you really really want to move this system file Thumbs.db?".
It's like a nagger that forces you to stay there in front of your monitor until the first thumbs.db is encountered.

[rdl]

If you meant that relatively literally, would you care to share your checklist?
I fear my own "to do list" got out of date and forgotten items became painful as the mental list got longer and longer...

Care to share your list? 

I can but I don't know how useful it would be. It's very specific to how I like things to be, right down to such things as desktop background color, and is for Windows 7 only. Some things might be not such a good idea for others. I should probably make a cleaned up copy.

Unfortunately, I just got off a 90 minute call with Comcast where I had to convince them that they really could activate my new modem over the phone. I'm a bit too worn out by technical stuff right now.

[rrinker]

 If I think about it, the LAST place I use to copy huge amounts of data is through the GUI. It's kind of slow. FOr moving mass amounts of data around between servers and drives, Robocopy is the way to go.Allows you to bypass the bullshit and just move the files.

[Sredni]

Yeah, but that's the whole point.
You have an OS and you do not use its services because they are slow, cumbersome, troublesome or worse.

[rrinker]

Robocopy is a Microsoft utility provided with Windows.

For single files or small directories the drag and drop works fine. For gigs and gigs of data, not so much.

I can't even use a USB port in Linux without giving myself permissions. I know how to do it, but it's still a PITA. THe grass is not always greener.

Maybe it's because I have used Windows since version 1 (yes, there was such an animal, embedded in a few applications, ran on a 8088 machine just fine). No, it's not perfect, but neither are any alternative OSs. Having to work with a wide range of versions (way too many people still running Server 2003), if you pretend Vista and 8.0 never existed, it's significantly better today than back then.

[Nerull]

Yeah, but then you don't have the cool factor. If you can't be computer literate, just bash microsoft, or even better, replace the 's' in their name with a '$', then you can be cool and get cred without having to do any hard work like actually learning how to use linux.

I especially like the comment that you can rename files out from under a program without 'errors or surprises' - if only. Yeah, the OS won't stop you, but that doesn't mean you won't run into surprises.

As someone who actually uses Linux and not just claims to for internet bragging rights, the deep ignorance I see from a lot of the braggers scares me. They think Linux is a magic box that fixes all their problems, when in reality they just now don't understand their computer enough to see them. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. The OS you don't understand at all seems better than the one you slightly understand.

[Sredni]

Robocopy is a Microsoft utility provided with Windows.

For single files or small directories the drag and drop works fine. For gigs and gigs of data, not so much.

EDITed to remove excess sarcasm.

With several gigabyte, I did not mean millions of files. Just a handful, like movies.
User generated data, in user created folders.
Asking to use robocopy for that is just saying "do not use the GUI, the OS is inept". Which is good if the OS is named DOS. A little less good if it's named "Windows".

It has to be very difficult to implement a basic functionality of an OS such as moving files from here to there. After all, once you issued a command (in whatever form, being it a line command or a click and drag gesture) that means "move all these files and folders from here to there", I wonder what makes M$ (yes, with the $) think that one might want to leave thumbs.db files back. As a memento of past pictures, perhaps?
"Hey, I know you just deleted/moved all the pictures and you even want to remove the folder they were in, but how about keeping this useless thumbs.db file? Why on Earth should you want to delete that too? It might come useful sometimes, don't you think? For example you might want to copy back exactly the same pictures in this very folder, in that very likely event it will save you two seconds in regenerating a new one. Mind you, you'll have say no to copying back the one that was generated in the newest location"

As usual the solution it to either be nagged or to renounce to a potentially useful feature (storing thumbs for avoiding generating them over and over).

[dmills]

Certain truth to the fanboyism thing, but all operating systems suffer from that, and truth is that they, like say EDA CAD tools, **all suck**.

Linux/BSD/Windows/OSX, choose your poison, they all trade off the broken in different ways.

Regards, Dan.

[TerraHertz]

I have a checklist, about two pages long, of stuff I have to change in a fresh Windows 7 install before I consider it usable. Turning off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files is on that list.

Please post it. As others have asked too. Don't care if it's messy or includes bad language. Plain text? Whatever it is, just add it as a file attachment. Maybe we should have a dedicated thread: Tricks to beat Windows version n into bearable configuration.

I still use WinXP, as I have a lower tolerance for MS-bullshit and feature-churn than most. I have the same kind of post-install patches list for XP, also quite long. Happy to post that, but I don't think anyone would be interested.

I'm asking for your list because at some point soon I must get the nlite version for Win7.

Code: [Select]

nliteos.com/    Pre Win7
ntlite.com/      Win7 +
But it costs money and I've been too slack+poor  to get it yet, and create an unkeyed custom install image of Win7 that I can tolerate.  Knowing I'll have to wade through lots of extra MS-hell to create a Win7 MS-shit-removal list has been one of the factors putting me off doing it. An existing list could be a big help.

Btw, I too feel that MS's strategy is to incrementally remove UI functionality and replace it with pointless visual glitter and spy/payware as fast as they can reasonably get away with while maintaining the illusion that it's all accidental, poor management, marketing/fashion, etc. I could go into reasons why MS upper management want this, but it's a waste of time. Some already get it, almost everyone else is conditioned to block it out with 'tin foil hat' memes and other mind-jammers.

It amazed me when (just last year) I realized MS in Win7 removed the ability to manually position icons in folder display. But the code to do it is all still there, and that functionality can be re-enabled with a hack. So they didn't do it to reduce code bloat.

Then why? The ability to spatially group things (icons in this case) in functional sets, and create clear and memorable visual arrangements is key to human ability to recognize and remember things by spatial relationships. It's such a fundamental feature, so crucial that it should be present at the lowest level in any OS UI. But MS specifically and deliberately disabled this existing capability! For no pretended reason (other than their unadmitted true reason.)

Then they tried to force Win8 Metro on us. Ha ha ha! But still most people don't perceive Microsoft's consistently malign intent.

Not to mention perpetual Windows deliberate cripples, eg that information on individual layouts and display config of folder contents isn't stored in the actual folders. But is instead deeply buried and obfuscated in the registry, thus ensuring that folders as entities complete with their content display attributes CANNOT be portable between different machines. Can't even be moved around intact on the same machine! It's mind numbingly stupid on a superficial level; quite cunningly evil at a deeper level. But Windows users just accept it without thought. Astounding.