Yes, you should enable thumbs caching. Explanation ... Just now, I spent 30 miinutes with Google, Micorsoft, and other sites who all claim to be authorities. Some said, "turn it off" and some said, "turn it on". They all agreed that XP would run faster. groan Some nuggets of truth did emerge ... The time (delay) to make thumbnails (e.g. update the thumbs.DB file increases if you add or delete images often. I have a basic question, do you see this problem every time you go to a folder with images ... or just the first time you open such a folder folder with thumbnail view? I know on my PC, when I collect images from the flash card to an XP folder (usually a folder for the specific day and topic), there is a long delay ... but only the first time. HTH