During a Windows or Solidworks update, my system lost the ability to show me an icon preview of my Solidworks files. This makes it difficult to find parts and drawings, so I spent some time finding the solution.
Many responses to other Solidwork users experiencing the same problem steered people to folder options check boxes. This didn’t work for me. What I needed was to re-register certain DLL files with the Windows registry.
- Load the command prompt window with Administrator rights
- Type in these commands:
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Common Files\SOLIDWORKS shared\swdocumentmgr.dll”
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Common Files\SOLIDWORKS shared\sldwinshellextu.dll”
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Common Files\SOLIDWORKS shared\sldthumbnailprovider.dll”
I found a near-solution at GoEngineer, but I had to tweak their instructions a bit because the sldthumbnailprovider.dll file was in a different folder.
(This was the fix for Solidworks 2024 on Windows 11)
Simmer3D 