🚀 go-pugleaf

I've found a method to bring the PDF thumbnails back to the 64 bit Explorer that has worked three times on two different Vista 64 bit systems, and lets you continue to use Adobe's products. I hope this helps someone out:

1) Uninstall Adobe Reader / any other readers. (We tried leaving Acrobat Pro 8 installed on one machine and this still worked... no guarantees though!)
2) Install PDF-XChange Viewer (Free), but do NOT allow it to become the default PDF viewer. You can get this from <http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer/>
3) Run PDF-XChange Viewer. Again, do NOT allow it to become the default PDF viewer.
4) Check for updates using the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu item
5) Install the shell extensions update it offers, and close PDF-XChange Viewer
6) Install Adobe Reader 9.
7) Run the disk cleaner and remove all thumbnails
8) Reboot

It seems like a lot of steps, but as I said above, it has worked three times on two different Vista 64 machines.

If you let PDF-XChange Viewer become the default PDF viewer, everything seems to be okay for a little while, but my experience was that the thumbnails stopped being updated.

Good luck!