After I first got onto msn I went into my favorites tried to load a page and it wouldn't load. So I tried a few other pages and I was having no luck getting these pages to show. I kept getting the page cannot be displayed warning. I ran the Ad-aware program. Well After Ad-aware ran, it had found servedby.netshelter.net so I had it quarrantined. Well, Norton's antivirus had pop up to do a schedule scan, which I had forgotten about. So I first had it to pause, then decided to stop the scan at this point. I then ran spybot after Ad-aware finished. Spybot had found that DSO, but that was all it found. I told it to fix these 5 entrys. I closed down the program and that's when I noticed that I have this Thumbs.db icon on my desktop. Why is it there? What is it for? I'm not ignorant, I just need more learning!

When you put Explorer (Windows Explorer, not Internet Explorer) into Thumbnail view, Windows saves the thumbnail images in the Thumbs.db file. (A harddrive can get fairly littered with them after a while.) I don't know why you would have the icon on the desktop, but I'm pretty sure it's okay to delete. (I just did that with one of our machines last week.) Perhaps, though, you should wait for somebody else to reply, because there may be something going on with it that I don't know about. Micro

I was going to delete this thumbs.db icon on my desktop, but when I right clicked on it and clicked on the delete, I was notified that this was a system file and if I was to delete it then I might have a file or something might not run or something like this. This was the same day that I had updated Spywareblaster and had made a post about the update here in the security section, but I was wrong about it being a new update. So, I'm thinking that this icon could have been caused from this update maybe? What should I do now? I will be getting my DSL hooked up tomorrow so I don't want to mess up my computer or cause any troubles before I get it installed. I don't want to take any chances right at this moment for anything to go wrong. I'm not ignorant, I just need more learning!

I just checked the time as to when this thumbs.db was created. It shows the time was at Yesterday, January 17, 2005, 9:07:00 AM. I know for certain that is when I was running the Ad-aware scan. I remember this very clearly, because of the Norton's antivirus had just tried to start it's scheduled scan at 9:AM, which I had forgot all about it's schedule. So I had paused it and then decided to stop it because nothing is suppose to be running when Ad-aware is scanning. But at 9:07AM the only thing that I know was running was the Ad-aware program scan. My antivirus was set at disabled before I started the scan. I was doing Ad-aware and spybot scans because when I had gotten onto the internet, after I got to my home page, I kept getting this white page and it said that the page could not be displayed and every page after this was the same. After I quarantined and got back onto the internet, things worked great again. What do I need to do to get rid of thumbs.db icon? I'm not ignorant, I just need more learning!

Since nobody else has chimed in, I'll stick with my previous analysis. Moreover, I don't think any harm can be done either by deleting or leaving it there. Micro

thumbs.db is a pain in the backside. The file does not appear to do anything except take up space. When ever I burn my holiday photos to a CD-R, Nero exposes these (normally hidden) files. I delete them via Neros view window and can then fit a few more pictures with the saved space that this file was using. If you right click a pictures folder, you will see Windows often reports there being one more file than the number of pictures in that folder. As a side note, after I have deleted my pictures, this file remains in that folder, still in it's original size. Come on Bill, what's that file REALLY doing? BTW I don't visit porn sites! There is no need to, since I'm married to Ekaterina Gordeeva..... Well, in my dreams anyway {:-P~

Hi Tammy1949, Copy this link into your address bar and hit enter it explains your question in detail http://www.fcs.iastate.edu/computer/tips/thumbs/default.htm Take Care.