This post shows students and new users steps to clear and reset Windows thumbnail cache when using Windows 11. Windows uses cache to store copy of images, videos, documents and other data so they can be retrieved quickly without trying to scan your system and locate each time you want to reuse.
Cache helps speed up your system and improve performance. Windows thumbnails cache can also become corrupted causing thumbnails to display incorrectly or distorted.
When this happens, you may want to clear out and reset the cache so that it can be rebuilt resolving the corruption.
By default, Windows stores each user cache .db file in a hidden folder located at the path below:
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
or browse to the user folder.
(C:\Users\{user-name}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer)If your system becomes slow and images are not displaying properly or distorted, resetting Windows cache may help resolve the issues, and the steps below show you how.
How to reset or clear Windows cache in Windows 11
As mentioned above, Windows uses cache to store copy of images, videos, documents and other data so they can be retrieved quickly without trying to scan and locate each time you want to reuse.
If Windows cache becomes corrupted, you may have to clear and reset it.
Below is how to do that.
First open File Explorer, then click on This PC or Home. There, right-click on the Lock Disk (C:) drive and select Properties.
On the Properties window, under General tab, select Disk Cleanup button as highlighted.
Check the Thumbnails box, and click on OK to clear and reset Windows thumbnails db.
That should do it!
Conclusion:
This post showed you how to clear and reset the thumbnails db cache in Windows 11. If you find any error above or have something to share, please use the comment form below.
