Quicktime and Vista

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I’m hoping that one of you guys can help me out with this because I’m fucked if I can get any joy out of Apple.com.

I recently installed the latest version of iTunes on my (Vista Ultimate) PC, also installing QuickTime 7.2 in the process. Since then Vista has been able to create thumbnails for MP4 files.

That would be kinda cool if it wasn’t for the fact that browsing to a directory full (full, in this case, meaning more than one) of these files causes Explorer to eat 100% of my CPU and gradually chomp more and more memory without actually creating any more than one of the thumbnails.

I’ve searched the web and no one seems to acknowledge that Quicktime has enabled such a feature on Vista, least of Apple who - of course - only put out the vaguest of changelogs whenever they release a new software revision for any of their apps.

Stupidly, you can uninstall QuickTime but iTunes then refuses to start which means that I’m stuck with QuickTime being installed until I can find an alternative to iTunes that I can stand.

Has anyone any idea how to disable thumbnailers in Vista?

2

Can’t you just change your folder to Detail or List view instead of thumbnails or Med/Large icons?

3

You can but since directories are typically in Large Icon view by default, Explorer has already tried to create the thumbnails by the time you change to the alternate view and it’s still screwed. I think I’ve sussed it out though - there’s a DLL in c:\program files\Windows Live\Photo Gallery called WLXQuickTimeShellExt.dll. I reckon if I delete or rename this, it’ll solve my problem.

4

Hmmm… Looks like I may have answered my own question - I don’t think it’s QuickTime at all, I think it’s that Windows Live Gallery Beta(!) that MS released last week.