PDF thumbnail problem on windows Vista 64bit

Help & Support
1

I love PDF thumbnails....

I am talking about thumbnails that are generated by Adobe Acrobat if you use it as a default viewer for .pdf files

Unfortunately maybe due to adobes lack of attention to customers or just because they want to make money with including this in the next CS something, windows Vista 64 bit currently has no support for thumbnail generation.

This problem is caused by the fact that 64 bit applications can not load .dll files that have been compiled in 32 bits.

So in short words - Vista 64bit uses a 64 bit explorer. Adobe acrobat is 32 bits. You can use it in 64 bit windows, but it will run in compatibility mode .... For the 64 bit explorer it means that it can not load the required .dll file that is used to generate the thumbnails - so NO THUMBNAILS

Included in vista 64 is a 32 bit version of explorer - when you open it, it generates al the thumbnails no problem....

So ..... the PROBLEM ...

I want Dopus to show .pdf thumbnails.... I know that it is possible with the thumbnail extraction thing in preferences ...... BUT.... Dopus looks for the default explorer used on the system which is the 64 bit explorer... and it can't load the .dll so NO thumbnails ....

Can anybody help me figure out HOW to make DOPUS look for the 32bit explorer and extract the thumbnails in that way.... it would be so awesome to figure out a workaround to this problem... because i think it is unlikely that Adobe will come out with 64 bit apps in the next 2 years ... :open_mouth:

Thanks...

2

I don't know of an easy way at the moment, unless there's a non-Adobe thumbnailer with an x64 version.

In theory Opus could call on the 32-bit version of Adobe Reader to generate the thumbnails. That is what 64-bit Opus does in order to display PDF files in the viewer. However, doing that takes quite a bit of extra work so. It's not a five minute job but it is possible, at least in theory.

It would also be possible for someone to write their own x64 wrapper of the 32-bit Adobe thumbnail generator, making it available for the whole system, not just Opus. I haven't heard of such a thing, though.

Another alternative would be some code which extracts the PDF thumbnails without relying on Adobe components. I don't know how difficult that is to do but if there is code to do it then turning it into an Opus plugin would be simple.

3

there isn't a 64 bit Non adobe thumbnailer ..... unfortunately ...

i am not aware of any other plugins or programs that generate thumbnails for windows explorer ...that's the biggest problem that adobe doesn't really want anybody to figure this out .... and they don't want to do it themselves....

also .... i can't write code.... :frowning: ....

would be nice if Dopus creators could look at creating their own thumbnailer... but i guess i have to write to GPSoftware .... again ...