Preview in explorer view doesn't work after upgrade to 2012

This seems to be most commonly caused by conflicts with multiple versions of eDrawings. (You'll be amazed at how many versions you'll have on your machine if it a few years old!)

Uninstall all versions of eDrawings, via both Add/Remove programs and modify your existing SW installations and remove it there too.

Do a repair install of EPDM, this will put the latest and greatest, version of eDrawings on your machine.

I'll admit you likely don't have to remove every version of eDrawings, but there is no reason to have more than one version anyway.

Hi Chad,

       Did You Check these Settings?

Admin tool ->Users -> "User Name (RMB)"->Settings->Viewer.

Did anyone find a definate answer to this?   I just had this issue in my test environment.

If this is a common it will hold off my upgrade, I will not go out and manually uninstall/repair a few hundred e-drawings installs.

Corey Vantilborg

My preview stoped working when I upgraded to SP4. I have the same settings that Ravi posted in the image, but in the eDrawings folder there is one emodelviewer.exe application and one emodelviewer.exe.xml file. Could the configuration file cause the problem?

-Derek

I present to you.... the answer!....

This is an indication that the "sldthumbnailprovider.dll" DLL is not properly registered on the PC. To resolve the problem:

1. Locate this DLL on the PC. By default, it is installed to "%Program Files%\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks"
2. In the Start, Search programs and files bar, enter:

regsvr32 "<path to DLL>\sldthumbnailprovider.dll"

{yes use the quotation marks}

3. Press Enter

The DLL will register and the previews will display in the Windows Explorer Preview Panel.

NOTE:    IF YOU ARE NOT ADMIN ON YOUR COMPUTER... YOU WILL HAVE TO RIGHT CLICK ON THE 'COMMAND PROMPT' IN ACCESSORIES AND 'RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR'  *Instead of typing in text into the 'search programs dialogue box'