Everything not showing thumbnails and previews of OneDrive image files

[David.P]

Edit -- the original title and subject of this thread was: "Everything keeps downloading images from OneDrive"
After this was resolved, the topic changed to the problem now mentioned in the subject.

I just saw that Everything is downloading thousands of images from OneDrive in the background, even though the containing OneDrive folder is set to "Free Up Space".
I did not search for

Content:

In fact, I had no search going at all.

It also starts downloading the images immediately after booting Windows.

Meanwhile it seems that it downloads not only images but apparently everything from OneDrive.

What could be causing this?

[void]

Normally, Everything should not be touching your file content.

Are you viewing files as thumbnails? (View -> Thumbnails)
Are you showing the preview pane? (View -> Preview)
Are you indexing properties? (Tools -> Options -> Properties)
Are you indexing content? (Tools -> Options -> Content)

Are you using a custom icon shell extension that might be accessing file content?
To disable icon shell extensions in Everything:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left.
• To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
  icon shell
• Select icon_shell_extensions.
• Set the value to: false
• Click OK.

[David.P]

> Are you viewing files as thumbnails? (View -> Thumbnails)
Sometimes, but not currently.

> Are you showing the preview pane? (View -> Preview)
Yes, normally I do. But I have disabled it now.

> Are you indexing properties? (Tools -> Options -> Properties)
Yes, a few:


> Are you indexing content? (Tools -> Options -> Content)
No

Are you using a custom icon shell extension that might be accessing file content?
To disable icon shell extensions in Everything:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left.
• To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
  icon shell
• Select icon_shell_extensions.
• Set the value to: false
• Click OK.

OK, I have disabled that setting now. But Everything still starts downloading all files from OneDrive as soon as it is started. For example, it also downloads all my hard disk images of the type *.adi from Aomei Backupper

[David.P]

I have now disabled indexing properties entirely, and this seems to have stopped the issue.

[void]

If you wish to index properties, please check the "Exclude recall on data access" option to prevent Everything from download cloud files.

[LeoLUG]

I have now the same problem, with version 1.5.0.1355a - it's start downloading every results I search for, for any type of files (even after removing the index properties option, and for sure, there is no content indexing rule for this files).
Anyone with same problem?
Any solution?

[void]

Sounds like enabling Tools -> Options -> General -> Store settings and database has fixed the issue.

With Store settings and database disabled, Everything is likely to have trouble storing settings and data on disk, causing Everything to reindex information on each startup.

[David.P]

Unfortunately, I now have the opposite problem. Everything no longer downloads anything, for example when the preview pane is active. Not even images are previewed. Thumbnails are not displayed either, instead only the JPEG icon appears.

I have not blocked Everything in the OneDrive privacy/download settings.

In fact, I've just realized that it's not due to OneDrive, as neither previews nor thumbnails are displayed even for local folders.

What could be the reason for this...?

[void]

Permission issue maybe?


Please check your debug log for error messages.
Look for the following line:
CreateFileW(): <error-code>: Failed to open file <filename>
What error code is shown?


Please make sure Everything is installed correctly and running as a standard user:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the General tab on the left.
• Check Store settings and data in %APPDATA%\Everything.
• Uncheck Run as administrator.
• Check Everything Service. (Please make sure this is tick-checked and not square-checked)
• Click OK.
• Exit Everything (right click the Everything tray icon and click Exit).
• Restart Everything.

[David.P]

Thank you, will do and report back!

[David.P]

Okay, I've done all of this now. I even completely uninstalled and reinstalled Everything and let it run with default settings.

It still doesn't show thumbnails and previews for images. Actually, there are no thumbnails nor previews for any file types.

Is there anything else I could try?

Attached is the debugging log.

I only noticed that shutting down Everything via the tray icon does not work. It remains active with two processes in Task Manager. When I then start Everything, this prompt appears after a minute or so:



If I click on Terminate, Everything then comes up again.

Also, I have tried to save all settings files so that I would be able to restore them after the reinstallation. Unfortunately, some settings are missing, for example my customized $openpath("%1") command. In which file would this be saved?

[void]

Thank you for the log.

The log shows there's no preview handler for png files.
This is normal.
Everything will then fall back to shell_item_image_factory to gather a thumbnail to preview.
My guess is shell_item_image_factory is hanging when loading the png thumbnail.



Could you please send a mini crash dump:

• Attempt to show thumbnails in Everything.
• Exit Everything (File -> Exit)
• Download Process Explorer from Microsoft:
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer
• In Process Explorer, select Everything64.exe (The Everything64.exe process running under Explorer.exe)
• Right click Everything64.exe and under Create Dump, select Create Mini Dump.
• Choose a filename and click Save.
• Please send this file to support@voidtools.com or upload here.

Could you please send a debug log when exiting Everything:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, under the Debug submenu, check Start Debug Logging.
• Exit Everything (File -> Exit)
• Please send your %TEMP%\Everything Debug Log.txt to support@voidtools.com or upload here.

In which file would this be saved?

%APPDATA%\Everything\Everything-1.5a.ini



Please try disabling shell_item_image_factory:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left.
• To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
  shell
• Select shell_item_image_factory.
• Set the value to: false
• Click OK.

shell_item_image_factory

[David.P]

Thank you, will do all and report back.

[David.P]

Hello all,

I was going to come back on this and report the current status. Everything has absolutely no problem showing thumbnails of files that are contained in normal local folders on the hard drive.

However, as soon as images are under a OneDrive local folder path, Everything does not display any thumbnails, no matter whether the files are kept "online only" or whether the files are "present on the device".

Everything does not even show previews in the preview pane when I click on such image files in the file list. Again, this only happens when image files are under any arbitrary local OneDrive path. Everywhere else, image file thumbnails and preview pane work perfectly.

Why would that be so?

Of the measures mentioned above by @void, I have deactivated shell_item_image_factory, but this has not changed the behavior.

OneDrive thumbtails not shown.png (679.42 KiB) Viewed 24723 times

Everything showing a mix of image file thumbnails in normal folders and in OneDrive folders. The image files in the OneDrive folders are all "present on this device", but still no thumbnails and previews are created.

[void]

Does pressing F5 show the thumbnails?
-This is showing thumbnails for me when the file is cloud only.

Does switching to a different file, then back again show the preview?
-This is showing preview for me when the file is cloud only.



I will look into making Everything automatically refresh thumbnails and the preview when they are available for cloud only files.

[David.P]

Hello David, and thanks very much for your reply.

The answer to both of your questions is no, unfortunately. There is no thumbnail and no preview even when, for example, I had right-clicked on the containing folder and activated "always keep on this device", and then waited until the status of all files has the full green checkbox icon:

OneDrive Windows Explorer icons meaning.png (99.06 KiB) Viewed 24671 times

I'd be very happy if you could have a look into this.

Speaking of thumbnails in OneDrive, I have recently learned that OneDrive even supplies thumbnails for most file types, including documents and PDFs, without the file having to be downloaded to the device.

Maybe you can also look into this and use their respective API if that should be possible?

I believe this is an awesome feature of OneDrive.

[David.P]

I'm unfortunately not getting any thumbnails and not even previews for any images that are under any OneDrive path, not even when they are clearly downloaded and present locally

[void]

I am unable to produce the issue my end.

Debug Logs might help:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, under the Debug submenu, check Start Debug Logging.
• Search for your OneDrive Folder, for example:
  
  \OneDrive *.jpg
• Set the view the thumbnails.
• Press F5.
• From the Tools menu, under the Debug submenu, check Stop Debug Logging.
  ---This will open your %TEMP%\Everything Debug Log.txt in Notepad.
• Please upload your log in a /bugreport.

The debug log will show the exact error code for the thumbnail load failure.

Look for the following lines:

Code: Select all

IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed <error code>
SHCreateItemFromIDList IShellItemImageFactory failed <error code>
get thumbnail exception <exception code>
IExtractImage::Extract failed <error code>
bad IExtractImage size <width> <height>
IExtractImage::GetLocation failed <error code>
GetUIObjectOf IExtractImage failed <error code>
extract image exception <exception code>
ParseDisplayName <error code> <filename>
ParseDisplayName MAX_PATH <filename> // filename length exceeded MAX_PATH

Successful lines:

Code: Select all

<filename> got thumbnail <width> x <height>, Bits: <bitdepth>

[David.P]

Thank you. Will do and report back.

[David.P]

I have sent a bug report including the log file as instructed.

Thank you very much for looking into it.

[David.P]

Thanks to David for checking my debug logs.

At the moment, it seems there's not much that can be done in Everything regarding the thumbnails issue, since the problem seems to be caused by some restriction policy in my company.

See also corresponding discussion here in the Dopus forum: Thumbnails only work for the personal OneDrive but not in OneDrive for Business, not even in Windows Explorer.

As I'm usually searching my files on my OneDrive for Business, but have to switch to searching our normal Windows file server when searching for images (because only there, thumbnails will be shown):

Can I somehow set up a filter fore "Images" that not only switches to filtering for images and showing thumbnails but also disables Omit Results as long as that filter is active? Possibly using a keyboard hotkey?

[void]

Thank you for the logs.
I will add my notes here too:

> IExtractImage::Extract failed 8004b207
> IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b207



The thumbnails fail to load with the error: 0x8004b207 WTS_E_NOSTORAGEPROVIDERTHUMBNAILHANDLER

I haven't found much information on this error.

Only this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/319587/what-is-the-meaning-of-comexception-%280x8004b207%29-a



To disable the brown box overlay:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left.
• To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
  overlay
• Select thumbnail_overlay_icon
• Set the value to: false
• Click OK.

Can I somehow set up a filter fore "Images" that not only switches to filtering for images and showing thumbnails but also disables Omit Results as long as that filter is active? Possibly using a keyboard hotkey?

To create an image filter that ignores your result omissions:

• From the Search menu, click Add to filters....
• Change the Name to: Images (no omit)
• Change the Search to:

  Code: Select all

  ext:ani;apng;avif;avifs;bmp;bpg;cur;dds;gif;heic;heics;heif;heifs;hif;ico;jfi;jfif;jif;jpe;jpeg;jpg;jxl;jxr;pcx;png;psb;psd;svg;tga;tif;tiff;wdp;webp;wmf noomit:
  

• Set a keyboard shortcut.
• Click Ok.

Filters can be activated from the Search menu, Filter bar (View -> Filters), right clicking the status bar, filter macro or filter keyboard shortcut.
Filters can be organized from Search menu -> Organize filters.

no-omit:

[David.P]

To create an image filter that ignores your result omissions:

• From the Search menu, click Add to filters....
• Change the Name to: Images (no omit)
• Change the Search to:

  Code: Select all

  ext:ani;apng;avif;avifs;bmp; [...] ;psd;svg;tga;tif;tiff;wdp;webp;wmf noomit:
  

• Set a keyboard shortcut.
• Click Ok.

Thank you! It is absolutely awesome that a filter can even be set to ignore result omissions!

It seems that this way, i.e. by also adding a path to the filter, this effectively solves the problem of how to toggle two different omit result states, at least partially:

image.png (66.84 KiB) Viewed 22436 times

Everything consistently proves it's one of the finest software creations ever! Thank you so much!

[David.P]

Hello void, and everyone,

This post is intended to summarize the core issue with thumbnails of files under OneDrive locations and propose a robust solution, hopefully making it easier to implement a fix.

The Core Problem:
Like many users, I rely on Everything for (e.g., system-wide) image searches. With OneDrive's "Files On-Demand," thumbnails for cloud-only files do not appear in Everything. Even for locally available files within the OneDrive folder, thumbnails often only show up in Everything after a manual refresh (F5). This creates a significant workflow interruption.

The Technical Reason (as I understand it):
The issue seems to be an architectural conflict. Everything uses standard Windows Shell APIs (IShellItemImageFactory) to get thumbnails, which expects to read the local file. However, OneDrive's cloud-only files are just placeholders (reparse points). Trying to read them via the standard method either fails or triggers an unwanted download of the entire file, which defeats the purpose of Files On-Demand.  

The Proposed Solution: Microsoft Graph API
The modern and correct way to solve this seems to be using the Microsoft Graph API. This API has specific endpoints to request and retrieve thumbnails directly from OneDrive's servers without downloading the file itself. This would solve both problems: thumbnails for cloud-only files (and probably also for locally available files within the OneDrive folder) would appear, and no unwanted downloads would be triggered.

Alternative Approach: The Native Windows Cloud API (as used by Directory Opus)
An alternative, and perhaps more system-integrated method, is using the native Windows Cloud Filter API (CfAPI). This framework allows an application to work with cloud files in a system-compliant way. This is not just a theoretical approach -- Directory Opus successfully uses this exact method. As confirmed by their developer Leo in this forum thread, Opus then delegates the request to Windows, which instructs the OneDrive client to retrieve the server-generated thumbnail from the cloud. This approach has the advantage that the application itself does not need to handle web requests or authentication.

Microsoft's official documentation for building solutions with this API can be found here.

Summary:
Integrating either the direct Microsoft Graph API or the native Cloud Filter API to fetch thumbnails for OneDrive's online-only files would be a huge improvement for many users. I hope this summary is helpful and that you might consider this for a future version.

Workaround:
In the meantime, a usable workaround would be to immediately download all image files that are currently listed, or visible, in the file list, at least when the view mode is set to "Thumbnails". Currently, image files are not downloaded until the respective entry in the file list, or thumbnail, is clicked (with the preview pane open). Even then, the thumbnail of that image file is not displayed until you hit F5 in Everything.

Thanks again for your incredible work on Everything!

[void]

Thanks for the summary David.P,

I have on my TODO list to research newer thumbnail API calls.

[David.P]

Thank you, void. Looking forward very much to it.

PS:

The thumbnails fail to load with the error: 0x8004b207 WTS_E_NOSTORAGEPROVIDERTHUMBNAILHANDLER

I haven't found much information on this error.

Only this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answe ... 4b207%29-a

Here seems to be some more information about this issue:

Attempting to call IThumbnailCache::GetThumbnail on an dehydrated placeholder (i.e. from OneDrive or other sync programs that utilize Cloud Filter) which its thumbnail doesn't exist in the Windows Thumbnail Cache

Registration of a Windows Shell ThumbnailProviderHandler for cloud based placeholder files

[void]

Thanks for the information.

As a quick fix, the next alpha update will retry on the WTS_E_EXTRACTIONPENDING error.
From a quick test, this appears to work fine with onedrive files.

[David.P]

Oh wow void, that sounds awesome.
Thanks for the fast action!

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1401a will now wait for the thumbnail to load when the WTS_E_EXTRACTIONPENDING error occurs.

Everything will timeout after 30 seconds if the thumbnail fails to load.

Typically the thumbnail will load in 250 milliseconds.

[David.P]

This works like a dream, thank you so much for your awesome work! Your software literally saves my, ... bacon every single day at the office and at home.

It looks like Everything pulls the thumbnails via the OneDrive API, because when you click on a thumbnail for the first time, depending on image size and network speed, it can take a second or so until the full image is shown in the preview pane.

So everything/Everything is working as expected!

[Afevis]

Er... I seem to be having a regression here. I DIDN'T have any noticeable issues with my thumbnails loading with 1.5.0.1399a, and I just updated to Everything 1.5.0.1401a, and now I'm getting the issue described earlier in the thread where my thumbnails won't load until I manually F5 refresh - but it's occurring with ALL of my files, not just the ones in my cloud storage folders.

I use both OneDrive (170.2GB used of 1TB) & MegaSync (6.05TB used out of 10TB) together. All my files ARE stored local - none are cloud only, so there (presumably) shouldn't be a reason for me to be touching any cloud APIs at all for thumbnail images. (I do have symlinks for normal folders which redirect into cloud storage folders in case that might be a clue.)

Rolling back to 1.5.0.1399a fixes the issue immediately. 1.5.0.1402a has the same bug as 1.5.0.1401a.

Video of 1.5.0.1402a demonstrating the issue: https://youtu.be/DzVjH7c6OKo

Video of 1.5.0.1399a showing that thumbnails load immediately when I open everything without issue: https://youtu.be/a-AbqK3dyBg


My debug logs seem to be getting spammed with these error codes;

2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3809300369p.jpg: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3221948085_logo.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3742619525.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3931451989p.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 2748180011.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 4076249694_logo.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 4290079083.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 4159556359.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3765023376.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3686940890.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3087573559.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: localconfig.vdf: parent 00010000000d0805 not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 3624742954_hero.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.000: unable to add ntfs file: 4128043130_icon.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 4128043130_icon.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 3742619525.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 2258671092_hero.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 2565610141_hero.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 3809300369p.jpg: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 3221948085_logo.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 3931451989p.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 2748180011.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: unable to add ntfs file: 4076249694_logo.png: parent 00010000000d080e not found
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: DB_WAIT: _db_monitor_finished_process_fd_update_events_event_proc waiting for _db_monitor_ntfs_process_fd_update_events_thread_proc...
2025-12-06 02:47:26.001: DB_WAIT: _db_monitor_finished_process_fd_update_events_event_proc waited 0.000018 seconds
2025-12-06 02:47:26.034: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.093: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.156: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.217: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.281: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.343: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.404: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.467: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.527: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.589: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.650: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.713: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.773: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.835: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.897: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-06 02:47:26.959: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205

[void]

Thank you for the issue report and videos.

Does Everything start showing thumbnails after 30 seconds?
Everything will keep trying to get the thumbnail on error 8004b205 for up-to 30 seconds.

This timeout is too high, the next alpha update will drop this to 3 seconds and add a thumbnail_extraction_pending_timeout advanced setting for more control.

I typically see a the pending status for about 250 milliseconds.
I wonder why it is timing out for you? OneDrive connection issue? massive image or video? something up with a particular file?
After the 8004b205 errors in your debug log, look for

thumbnail getbitmap <filename>

, check you have access to this file.

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1402a adds a thumbnail_extraction_pending_timeout advanced setting.

Set to the number of milliseconds to wait for a pending thumbnail extraction.

Default: thumbnail_extraction_pending_timeout=3000

Set to 0 to disable the wait and load the next thumbnail immediately.

[Afevis]

I typically see a the pending status for about 250 milliseconds.
I wonder why it is timing out for you? OneDrive connection issue? massive image or video? something up with a particular file?
After the 8004b205 errors in your debug log, look for

thumbnail getbitmap <filename>

, check you have access to this file.

2025-12-10 23:58:54.324: IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage failed 8004b205
2025-12-10 23:58:54.330: IExtractImage::Extract failed 8004b205
2025-12-10 23:58:54.330: thumbnail getbitmap failed C:\Users\cmkoo\OneDrive\Desktop\Everything 1.5a.lnk

i definitely have access to all the files that are throwing the error - they're files from pretty much every folder, ie from my desktop, %appdata%, %program files%, ect.

image.png (306.12 KiB) Viewed 9252 times

1.5.0.1403a seems solid. i've even set my thumbnail_extraction_pending_timeout to 0 since i have everything local anyway (since i assume that only affects cloud synced thumnail caching?) and it all seems to be working fine. thanks for adding the option!

if you need any more debugging stuff for optimization, i'm more than happy to toss you whatever you need.