Thumbnails in windows 10 not displaying

[Beadmaster]

Hi, I have the PDF-Xchange Editor installed on two computers. I recently installed it on the current computer because I loved it so much on the other one!

However, a new problem has cropped up and I have no idea how to solve it. In the Windows folder, every PDF thumbnail is showing the PDF-Xchange icon, not a thumbnail of what the PDF file actually IS.

There is no problem with it on my other computer. It properly displays every file. Unfortunately, this is a terrible issue for me because it's the easiest way to verify at a time saving glance that every downloaded PDF file is complete and not corrupted. Otherwise, I can go through and have two files out of 10 that didn't download correctly, and unless I tediously check Every. Single. File. in the browser downloader, I have no way of telling what didn't download properly.

I already checked my system settings in Windows and it IS set correctly, verified by the fact that ALL of my other thumbnails...gifs, jpgs, pngs, etc, show a preview of what they actually ARE and not an icon.

The problem MAY stem from the fact that I'd originally mistakenly installed the PDF Xchange VIEWER (believing it to be the same program), but once I realized it wasn't, I installed the editor (and uninstalled the viewer) and that was exactly when my PDF thumbnails went to the PDF-Xchange icon thumbnail instead of a view of the thumbnails of the files themselves.

How do I remedy this? It's completely unacceptable, but I can't find a single setting in the program to change it.

Thank you in advance.

[lev]

Check out this topic: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=34448&p=155959&hilit=shell+extensions#p155959

[Beadmaster]

Thank you so much!

I literally just reinstalled and the issue sort of went away. The thumbnails are showing, but now the tiny icon in the lower right for identifying the file as a PDF-Xchange file is missing everywhere! It's better than it was, but I am really perplexed. Even after changing the default back to PDF-Xchange there is still no tiny icon anywhere in any PDF thumbnail. Oddest thing! Now they look like any other jpg, gif, etc.

This system is actually almost a copy of the older one, that is, I reinstalled most of the programs that I wanted and moved all of the data over. That older system displayed the icons as thumbnails, with the proper PDF-Xchange icon in the lower right of each thumbnail, but not on this newer machine.

[Beadmaster]

This issue is getting more and more bizarre. Thumbnails now are showing, but some of the files that weren't showing thumbnails yesterday are still showing as icons. Refreshing the files changes nothing.

And the most bizarre thing of all is I can copy those files within the same folder, where the system adds the notation of " - Copy" and those "copy" files work just fine, displaying as thumbnails and not icons, while the originals will only show as icons.

I don't get it.

[Beadmaster]

Plus a file I just downloaded only shows as an icon. Copied it in the folder less than a minute later, it's a thumbnail.

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Hello Beadmaster,

May I ask you to confirm that you are using the latest version 9.3.361.0?

Also, could you please send us a screenshot of the XCShInfoSetup.exe utility, so we can see what is controlling the shell extensions?

Regards.

[Beadmaster]

Thank you. Yes, this is the current version (I downloaded it just the other day).

Not sure how to get the screenshot to you, so I've uploaded it to a third party site:
https://prnt.sc/DZPcjyqakYQo

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Beadmaster,

Thanks for the screenshot.
Please change the values to "PDF-XChange" like this (and specifically the second line):

image.png

And all should be well!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Beadmaster]

Stefan,

Thank you - I did change the values and those thumbnails are now all visible on the files that previously weren't. The thumbnails themselves still don't have a tiny PDF-Xchange icon on them, but the main problem is gone and I'm okay with the lack of an icon.

Thanks again!

[sibojang9]

I have a similar issue. I did have the thumbnail with new installation of the pdf-x-change. Some time later, the thumbnail went away. I tried to change the setting of thumbnail handle to pdf-x-change, but always failed. The setting always returns back to "unchanged".

Notably, I got the same issue on two different computers for pdf-x-change.

snap559d.jpg

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello sibojang9,

The "Do not change" effectively means "keep current" - so when you select and apply your changes - after that the option will revert to "keep current" so that you do not accidentally try to overwrite the same setting multiple times.
Try to set them once, and even though it goes to "Do not change" - please check if the settings have been applied for you!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[sibojang9]

This is very misleading. I never saw such kind of settings in other software. How can I verify whether the software accepted my changes or not? This is no helpful at all for troubleshooting. Even I do not see the expected results, how can I know the problem lies with the software or something else.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, sibojang9

The reason that this is misleading is because we cannot verify that the change has been made properly, or check at a later date what has been set.

We send a request to windows to make the change, and they make that change in a few separate locations which we cannot reliably know the locations of to validate. That is why we handle the settings this way, If "do not change" is selected, it means when you click apply, we will not send windows another request to change that item.

The only way to reliably validate that the changes were made is to restart the PC, and then try performing the action which that item relates to.

Kind regards,

[sibojang9]

Okay, that is understandable. However, pdf-x-change should provide a warning box to explain this after the users have changed the settings. This bizarre behavior should be clearly communicated in the front, which can save a lot of guessing for the end-users.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, sibojang9

We try to avoid prompts like this, and in this case specifically, as I mentioned above, we do not know if it was applied successfully, or applied at all. There is no way for our software to be sure what is currently set, or confirm that our changes worked without manually testing and observing each item that should have been affected.

For that reason, a Dialog is highly unlikely, as we would need to add a 2-3 paragraph explanation saying "we tried to apply the changes, and it might have worked, but we don't really know... Good luck!" (in a more professional manner), and hope that people running into this issue would actually read a 3 paragraph dialog prompt (which far too many people will not).

The next alternative we could offer is giving each item a separate "apply" or "revert" button. The problem with this is that if you wanted to apply all 5 options, you would then need to click "apply" 5 times, and click "allow" on your UAC prompt, 5 times... It is not an ideal situation, and would arguably be more annoying to most people than the current confusion of the text here.

We are instead, now looking into changing the text in these options to offer something which clarifies that we tried to make a change, without guaranteeing that it was successful (because that is programmatically impossible at the moment), and also not sounding like we are saying "an attempt was made, and it failed".

Kind regards,

[asdf3sthdhawer53]

I'm not seeing thumbnails on windows 11 explorer after a fresh OS and PDF-Xchange Editor install. I tried to run XCShInfoSetup.exe and set all the options to PDF-Xchange Editor. I also tried command line regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\Shell Extensions\XCShInfo.x64.dll"

Still not showing PDF thumbnails.

Anything else I can do?

10.6.0.396


Edit: tried it again and after another restart, I can see the thumbnails now.

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello asdf3sthdhawer53,

Glad to hear that the thumbnails have appeared after the second restart. It might have been that Windows needed some time to generate those!

Also - if you can please consider updating to V10.7.2 build 400.

Kind regards,
Stefan