Preventing Windows clients from polluting network shares with Thumbs.db

We have several network shares which store various photographs taken by our media department. Whenever someone on a Windows client is using explorer to go into one of these folders they are automatically polluted with a Thumbs.db file (if the user has write permissons). How do we stop them from doing this without revoking user permissions?

This question was inspired by "Preventing Mac OS X clients from polluting Windows shares with resource forks".

In XP you can go into the View Tab in Folder Options (Tools | Folder Options in an Explorer window) and check Do not cache thumbnails.

or

Set this registry value to 1:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\DisableThumbnailCache

The registry tweak would obviously be easiest to deploy globally.

In addition to local changes via the user interface or the registry, in Active Directory domains Group Policy can be used to apply the setting to all clients.

The policy setting is called "Turn off caching of thumbnail pictures" and is found under User Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Windows Explorer