Updated: Someone told me I forgot about Tip #0 (zero) of Speed Up Microsoft Vista: Do not run Windows Vista, stick with Windows XP for now AND wait for the Windows 7. Or, alternatively, you may run Windows 7 Beta while we wait for the real thing.
To be fair to the MS Vista team, Vista is much more usable now with Service Pack 1 installed.
File thumbnails are nice that they give the file contents at-a-glance. However, too many of files in a given directory could slow down the Windows Explorer performance, especially when browsing files on a network servers or NAS. The performance hit is really noticeable.
The solution is to either: 1. Disable file thumbnails completely; or 2. Only disable for network browsing.
Solution 1
The first solutionis very easy:
1. Open “My Computer”
2. Open “Folder Options” under “Tools” menu
3. Click on the “View” tab
4. Make sure the “Always show icons, never thumbnails” checkbox is checked
5. Click the “OK” button and done.
Solution 2
This solution requires more work and you must have administrative rights/permissions to the system. We will use the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) to do the trick:
1. Click on “Start Menu”, choose “Run”, type "gpedit.msc" and then click the OK button (or press “Enter”)
2. On the left pane, go to "Local Computer Policy > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer"
3. After that, you should find “Turn off the display of thumbnails and only display icons on network folders”. Double-click on this entry.
4. Choose “Enable” and click OK to close the dialog box.
5. You can now close the Local Group Policy Editor and done.