Have you ever been looking around on your Windows XP computer and have found a mysterious little file called Thumbs.db? Chances are, you have. And there is an even larger chance that you do not know what this file
does, if you need it or not, and how to remove it.

The purpose of this file is actually quite simple. Every time you have some type of media file in a folder, Windows automatically creates this file. This file is created so you can view thumbnails of pictures and movies without opening the whole file. You know how every time you open your pictures folder, you see a little preview image of each picture? Thumbs.db creates those!

Do you need these files? This is something you need to decide yourself. The Thumbs.db file is not essential for your systems operation, but it really is useful. If you do a lot of media editing, or just have a lot of personal pictures, it would be a good idea to keep these files. If you don't have a lot of media files on your computer, or if you use very descriptive titles for your files so you know exactly what the file looks like without seeing it, then you probably don't need it. This is a personal decision you have to make.

How do you remove these files? It is not as hard as you would think.
Here is a set of simple instructions you can follow:

1. Open the Run dialog box from your start menu
2. Type in gpedit.msc
3. Click the Run button. This will open the Group Policy Editor.
4. On the left side, you will see a list. Click on User Configuration, then Administrative Templates, then Windows Components then finally Windows explorer.
5. Use your scroll bar to move down to the bottom of the long list of stuff that shows up. Double click to Turn off Caching of thumbnail images
6. Click the Apply button.

That's it! That's how easy it is to get rid of those little annoying files. If you just manually go around and try to delete each of these files, they will just be recreated next time you view that directory.You have to use the procedure demonstrated above to totally get rid of these files.

If you remove the Thumbs.db files and find that you like having all the thumbnail previews of your files, you can just follow the same procedure above o turn them back on.