As everything else looks more and more perfect I have one more thing.
I used to have Acrobat Reader for reading pdf files. It gave a sweet preview of what was inside the pdf file. But Acrobat is big and slow, so I installed PDF Xchange which is small and fast and pretty perfect.
Then I realized the preview was gone, so I reinstalled Acrobat, but no way I'm getting the preview back.
And actually I don't want Acrobat back, just the preview.

Now with psd files there is a preview if you have Photoshop installed and then somebody came up with a dll and a regfile that enables you to have a preview of psd files without having Photoshop installed.
(I have a beautiful preview of psd files and no Photoshop - makes me very happy LOL)

So I wondered if the same is possible for PDF?
Is there somthing like that available already?
Or does anyone have an idea how I could fix this myself?

Happy Sarah:)

Have had Foxit, Sumatra PDF, CoolPDF - and none of them gives a preview.
It comes specifically with Acrobat. But the silly thing is that after I uninstalled Acrobat reinstalling it doesn't make the previews come back. Not even when I make Acrobat the default handler of pdf and uninstall any other app that might handle pdf.

I can still see it on the laptop (not here, so I can't make a screenshot) and searched it's registry, but after reinstalling it on my PC the registry entries look exactly the same, but no preview:(

The same I think (I did it a while ago).

Well, truth be told, it is not important at all! (But come to think of it, what is? LOL)
And you don't need to have an answer ready to éééverything ...
Maybe someone else knows. We'll just leave it posted here and see what comes up:)

Cheers,
Sarah.

Well, I took a look at the regfile I have of the laptop and came up with this (already edited to path of my choice):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}]
"DisplayName"="@C:\\Program Files\\ShellExt\\Pdfprevhndlr.dll,-101"
"AppID"="{6d2b5079-2f0b-48dd-ab7f-97cec514d30b}"
"DisableLowILProcessIsolation"=dword:00000001
@="Adobe PDF Preview Handler for Vista"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}\InprocServer32]
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"
@="C:\\Program Files\\ShellExt\\Pdfprevhndlr.dll"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}\ProgID]
@="PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler.1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}\TypeLib]
@="{0F6D3808-7974-4B1A-94C2-3200767EACE8}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}\VersionIndependentProgID]
@="PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler]
@="Adobe PDF Preview Handler for Vista"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler\CLSID]
@="{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler\CurVer]
@="PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler.1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler.1]
@="Adobe PDF Preview Handler for Vista"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFPrevHndlr.PDFPreviewHandler.1\CLSID]
@="{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}"

Googled PDFPrevHndlr.dll and dowloaded it, placed it, ran regfile - and nothing happens.
Bummer ....
The solution to preview on psd files is similar, so I had good hopes it would work.
Since reinstalling Acrobat already didn't provide the wanted preview I wonder if it is just something that won't work for me. (The SarahJames Phenomenon ...)
Anybody wants to test this?
Or put me on track where I went wrong?
Or provide another solution ... LOL.

Thanks ScottW, the Foxit PDF handler works, but it was not what I meant.
The preview it gives is in Outlook or the preview pane in Explorer (which I never use), like this:

What happens on the laptop is that you don't see an icon, but a small preview of the file, like you see a thumbnail of a jpg file. (Ohhh, that's what I should call it: thumbnail on pdf files;-D)

And glad to know I'm not the only pc-perfectionist. LOL

Ok, now we're getting somewhere:)
I downloaded the 8.0 version the link above gave and voila:

Thumbnails of my pdf files!

Then I picked PDF Xchange as standard program to open pdf - and low and behold (is that the expression? ... Lighthouse will surely set me straight if not;-D) it still works

And now I'm gonna try to delete Acrobat and just keep the Acrobat preview handler ...
If that doesn't work I'll keep Acrobat installed, because spacewise I don't need to delete it, but I just want to try. I'll keep you posted.

lol. Good for you. Success once again.
"Voila" is correct. And so is "Lo and behold" (note the lack of "w") :)

Really I should slow myself down a bit - the answer was there already ... (like most of the time LOL)

One of the replies in the discussion I mentioned above ..

Well SarahJames. I have watched quite a few films, that were made in America or UK. They are dubbed into French. And English subtitles added. An awful lot of the time, the spoken word, and the subtitles bear no resemblance to each other at all!