Foolestroupe -

I'm not sure I'm separating when you're talking about Win98 and when it's WinXP.

In WinXP, Windows Explorer, Click View, and select Thumbnails. Any file that is a graphic file of any common type will display a small version of the same picture you get if you open the graphic file in an appropriate program. That's what a thumbnail is.

In WinXP (or Win2K) you do not need any separate .dll or other kind of program to display thumbnails in Win Explorer.

For files that are NOT graphics, you can associate any icon you want to a file, but in Win Explorer the icon will generally be the same for all files with the same file extension. In most cases, you'll want all the Word .doc files to show the "Word" icon, Excel .xls to show the "Excel" icon, etc; and the default is usually to associate the icon for the program that opens files of a given type with those files. When you are NOT viewing thumbnails, there are default icons for "standard" file types like .jpg, .gif, .bmp, etc, but you can change the icon for any one or more of these "file types" if you wish to.

The "same for all" limitation applies only to what shows in Explorer, and even there it doesn't apply to "executable" files, like .exe files, where you can have a different icon for each program. Most programs will "contain" a default icon, but you can change any of them to any icon you have available.

A shortcut, especially one that you put on the desktop, to any file of any kind, can be assigned any available icon.

With the thumbnail mode in Win Explorer, you shouldn't need a separate "thumbnail viewer" for any general use, and WinXP also includes the "Image Viewer" that will show a "full screen" of most graphics files, and "Paint" which lets you edit .bmp and .jpg pictures.

Note that there is no "view thumbnails" selection in the version of Windows Explorer in Win98, unless you've "added on" an accessory program to allow it. You won't need that "add on" program in WinXP (and it's unlikely that it will run very well, if at all in XP). Windows Explorer in WinXP has its own built in thumbnail generator.

John