I have Windows 8.1 on my laptop and have quite a few folders each containing hundreds and hundreds of image files. Whenever I turn my laptop on I find Windows has (sometimes, not always) deleted all the thumbnails for all these folders meaning that whenever I open one of them it has to rebuild the thumbs. If they're TIFF files this takes even longer than if they're jpegs but I use both formats equally (and cannot change that workflow). This is VERY annoying when I want to work on the images as I have to wait ages to see which is which.

Does anyone know how, reliably, to stop Win 8.1 deleting the thumbs? I've googled it and can't find anything helpful / relevant.

Try this ......

http://www.askvg.com/fix-thumbnail-cache-automatic-deletion-problem-in-windows/

Worked for me!

Steve

Thanks for the post but I've just tried everything as suggested on the link you sent but it hasn't made any difference. Think I'll just have to admit defeat and put it down to Microsoft being **** again and changing things for the sake of it when they were working just fine in the first place.