PDF Thumbnail missing (and a possible solution)

[admin]

pat55, I read your post again.

Your reluctance to spend a lot more time to share a solution is fully
justified and understandable especially in light of all of us being
directed to the "FAQ." The simple translation is to not post here.

Hmm.

It might be the fact that English is not my first language, but to me this looks like utter nonsense and pretty hostile. If you don't like it here, why don't you simply go away? We don't need this kind of bullshit here.

For many years now everybody visiting this forum gets all the help he/she needs. We have a bunch of extremely experienced and helpful folks here, who spend countless hours online helping people like you. And they do it for free. Thanks to those guys this forum has a great reputation as a welcoming, friendly, and helpful place.

And now you come and post this crap to a brand-new user (bobcrash)?! How dare you? Comes across quite impolite and rude IMO.

Don

[admin]

Hmm, pat55, I don't stop yet. Here is a thread you started on 16-09-2017:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17913

I took the time to read it, but could not understand what you want. Mysterious title "prob.". Huh? You did not even care to reply and explain your problem (or your prob?). Two days later it was more important to you to incite a new user.

Man, that sucks, doesn't it?

[BobCrash]

..Getting my Sumatra 64bit PDF viewer to work correctly with XY in my Win7 64bit environment..
..In a post following this one I've tried to summarize the results, reasons, etc....

My setup for this is:

~ Currently running XY 18.40 but tested back on 17.4 or maybe a little later version.
~ 6yr old Dell laptop XPS i7 4g mem Win7U 64, & dog-slow 400g hdrv. <--my pride & joy screamer~ (note- 'screamer' does not refer to speed..)
~ XY installed as a 'Portable' type install using the zip files.
~ But I never got Summata 32 or 64 to work correctly for XY folder thumb previews. (I easily could have screwed it up...)

~ then finally many months of frustration later, Don's mentions of '32 bit handlers, etc, started clicking in my aging brain..
~ Installed (the system ver) of Summ32-3.12, and in the installed prog folder I found 3 .dll's..
~ PdfPreview, PdfFilter, libmupdf
~ I ran these register lines at the DOS Prompt: (..lol.. DOS Prompt' made me smirk a little.. stupidly..)

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\SumatraPDF\PdfPreview.dll"
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\SumatraPDF\PdfFilter.dll"

~ and checked on my handi-work: (thanks to Highend for this quick script)
~ text get("previewhandler", "pdf"); which returned:

{3D3B1846-CC43-42AE-BFF9-D914083C2BA3} ..the Summatra pdf viewer and..
SumatraPDF Preview (*.pdf)
SumatraPDF Preview (*.pdf)

~ showing I had done twice as good a job as I had wanted.. (ok, ok.. but it ain't broke, & I ain't touching it..)
~ Next I dropped the un-zipped portable 64bit version 'SummatraPDF.exe' into my "C:...\XYplorerPro\" folder..
~ Next go to: Tools;Customize File Associations; and put in and check-to-activate these lines for XY file types you want:

pdf><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
epub><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
chm><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
pdb><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
mobi><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
djvu><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
prc><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe
cbr><xypath>\SumatraPDF.exe

~ Summatr64 now happily runs all those file types just fine and fast using the 64bit viewer.
~ Summatr64 will display a few more file types, but those are what I want as a default out of XY.
~ only pdf's show content in folder thumbs, same as in win-explorer but that is a normal limitation of those other file types, not XY.

~~~ NEXT PROBLEM: If win-explorer (or anything but XY) starts a pdf, win runs 32bit viewer ver, because of Summ32 system install.

~ I tried changing the individual .pdf pointer in Win file associations to my 64bit stand-alone exe in XY, but it wouldn't take.
~ Next I hid the Summ32 exe in the stock system install folder, and sure enough, windows didn't know what to run it with.
~ Next I put a copy of the (portable) SumatraPDF.exe (64bit) I have in my XY install folder in place of the system installed 32 bit .exe.
~ Just to be clear, the 64bit portable .exe replaced the 32bit system installed .exe in it's default 32 bit system program folder.
~ Now pdfs started frm anything uses 64bit. Of course, other files like djvu, mobi, need to be set for default use, if you don't always use XY.
~ Or just make a Summ Viewer shortcut to 64bit .exe in system prog folder to start it up empty, & drag any of the other file extensions into it.

~~ Notes..

~ Don't know how to do it all for portable use, cuz of need for system install of Summ32 ver. ..& Win10- I'm not the person to ask.
~ and most likely one of those dll's didn't need registering.. but I won't admit it.
~ I'm sure the guru's here could make all this a lot simpler instead of using my brainless experimenting...

~~ FINAL RESULTS in next post...

[BobCrash]

FINAL RESULTS...
~ All pdf views now work perfectly!

-Preview Pane
-Floating Preview
-Mouse Blowup viewer
-Thumbnail (and all views) in XY folders that never worked before (only a 'PDF' icon was showing)
-Thumbnail (and all views) in Win-Explorer folders work just as before.
-open any type of folder view of a pdf in XY or Win-Explorer, opens it with Sumatra 64bit reader.

SUMMARY...
~ My Sumatra64 PDF viewer now works with XY in my Win7 64bit, which greatly increased viewing speed, in all previews, thumbs, etc.
~ Plus it's in my portble file assoc's to open .epubs, .mobi's, chm's, djvu', prc's, etc.

~ Not that Summatra is any better than many other pdf viewers, but it's been an old tennis shoe I just like
~ (and don't have to memorize new hot keys, important at my age..).

~ Now the display in folders in 320 thumbs (for example) of large pdf books, magazines, and general info
(that I have hundreds of in various folders) is near instant stunning quality, instantly scrollable,
and all on my 6yr old Dell i7 laptop 4g mem Win7u-64, & dog-slow 400g hdrv. Unbelievable. Very cool.

..if I can figure out how to post a screenshot here, I will..
..and big thanks for your help on this Don, and numerous other XY gurus, spread over time and posts,
to finally figure it out with all the clues... ..and to Pat55, who I realized was like me, stuck in the cracks.

(BTW, Don, could you just increment my number of 'posts' a couple hundred, in view of the space I've used in this forum??
..Thanks in advance...lol..

[admin]

Thanks for the details! (Didn't even dream of the existence of a wood working porn mag.)

[RalphM]

With all the effort that went into this it might be a good idea to change the subject to something a bit more meaningful so other people might actually find and read this stuff!

[admin]

Yep, thanks for doing that!

[BobCrash]

Ralph.. I thought the same, but I don't know how to do that without starting a new thread, or just making a mess of something.

Don's comment about a 'woodworking porn magazine' is making my friends laugh hard.. lol..

Those are actually large books, each file is 70-130 megs in size.. I can't believe how fast XY can scroll through all my hundreds of huge pdf's now, all showing as 320 Thumbnails on my old laptop, plus how fast it previews fresh pdf's now. Amazing, and a long journey to this for me.

[jupe]

I just thought I would add to the excellent information that BobCrash has already given. I found out that SumatraPDF installer accepts some command line options, so that people following his guide needn't actually install SumatraPDF 32 bit completely if they didn't want to they could just do a "SumatraPDF-install .exe /x" to remove those needed files from the installer.

sumatrapdf.png (14.76 KiB) Viewed 2486 times

[highend]

Be careful that you don't use just the /x alone if you do this with the prerelease version!
Take the /d as well and give it an extraction path in that case (otherwise the files
are put into the syswow64 folder)