How to delete visible Desktop.ini, Thumbs.db and album art from My Music

Solution 1:

This did the trick for me, using Windows 7's Power Shell. Saving this answer, in case anyone else has this problem.

Get-ChildItem -incl "desktop.ini","thumbs.db","*.jpg" -path "V:\Music" -force -recurse | Remove-Item

This should work in Linux, but I've not tested it so I'm not really sure.

find ~/music -type f -name "desktop.ini" -delete
find ~/music -type f -name "Thumbs.db" -delete
find ~/music -type f -name "*.jpg" -delete

Solution 2:

You can prevent creation of thumbs.db in Windows Vista and above (7 etc) by opening the Local Group Policy Editor (+R and enter gpedit.msc) and go to;

User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components > Windows Explorer

_{or File Explorer for win 8}

And edit Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files. Enable it and hit OK.

To delete ones already created you can right click -> Properties on the drive from My Computer, hit Disk Cleanup, tick only Thumbnails and hit OK.

If you cant access the LGPE (e.g. MMC could not create the snap-in) or it just plain didn't work you can dabble in the registry;

HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Explorer -> Advanced

set DisableThumbnailCache to 1

If DisableThumbnailCache doesn't exist, create it as a new DWORD

_{reboot may or may not be required}