I fist must state that these steps I am about to provide are to be used by those of us whom are neurotic about files stored on the file system. While there are some good security reasons one may want to do this; I do what I am going to describe because I feel they clutter up my drive and dislike seeing or even knowing they are there.
My default windows (Win7 in my case) generation a file called thumbs.db in the folder that I am working in. The file thumbs.db is a thumbnail cache, used to store a small (thumbnail) image for Windows Explorer thumbnail view. The idea is to speed up the display of images as the smaller image does not need to be recalculated (regenerated) every time the use views the contents of a folder.
So what do I do about it? At first I use to delete them; that only makes me happy for that moment, as they come back like some kid with acne who pops one pimple to later show up again.
By using the Local Group Policy Editor I have found a better way to keep these guys /or gals from coming back. You can start the Local Group Policy Editor by typing gpedit.msc in the search or run text box.
The Editor will open to the top-level Local Computer Policy, so you will have to expand the User Configuration item in the left-side pane of the Editor window. Drill down through Administrative Templates, then Windows Components, and click on the Windows Explorer item. Near the top of the list in the right-hand pane of the Editor window you will find the setting “Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files”
To edit this policy setting, either double-click on the title of the policy or click the link titled “Edit Policy Setting” to the left of the setting list after you select the policy. Check the “Enabled” button and click OK
Close the Local Group Policy Editor. You may want to unhide all hidden file sand system files and do a search for the files and delete them. And now I can be happy knowing they are gone.