Solved Broken Taskbar Thumbnail Preview

Hi all,

I am having a problem with taskbar preview for explorer. The taskbar thumbnail preview appears to be broken. This is after the latest update (KB5058411).

There is only one explorer window, but there's a 2nd preview pane with a generic icon and nothing showing.

This is on my laptop, it is normal on my desktop.

Hi, swerd, not sure.

Try right-clicking the taskbar, select "Taskbar settings" and then "Taskbar behaviours” Change the option "Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels" is set to "Never".
See if it’s normal again.
Then try changing it back if you need to and check gain.

It fixed itself. Thanks @antspants.

Hi swerd :

What was the solution to this problem?
What was the cause of this problem?

-
The screenshot below shows what the problem looks like on the computer with this problem.
No other computer I have has this problem.

windowster said:

What was the solution to this problem?
What was the cause of this problem?

Click to expand...

It still randomly happens to me. I have no idea why it's happening. I am hoping that with 25H2, it will be gone.

The strange appearance of the empty file explorer thumbnail is concerning enough that I now restart Windows 11 whenever it appears.

Notably, the symptom does not appear immediately after a reboot and only shows up after the computer has been running for a while.

I have several computers. However only this one computer exhibits this odd symptom.

Eventually, I may simply "bite the bullet" and perform a complete reinstall and configuration of this computer. The software setup process involves literally several days, and dozens of hours of work to complete, which is a source of hesitation before engaging in such a drastic step.

I think I have been able to fix this problem.

To fix the problem I used the command line - dism - tool.

Numerous reliable websites have explanations about how to use the dism tool to perform a system cleaning.

I ran the command shell in administrator mode, using the dism tool with the following options.

dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

the - /online - option means "work on the current installed operating system".

Afterward I had to reinstalled the GPU display driver. This was a little tricky, and involved using the "device manager" to install both the display driver and the monitor driver, and then run AMD Adrenaline installer.

I also reinstalled major device drivers such as the network driver(s) with the latest versions.

Since the fix, Macrium Reflect clone backup has run automatically overnight, so also have a full live clone backup of my system after the fix.

So far, my system is back to functioning correctly.