New Computer

[HankP]

Just got a new computer.  Is there an easy way to migrate all my PDN settings, plugins, etcetera to the new rig?

 

If not, does my PDN have a list of the plugins that I have downloaded, so that I can download them to the new machine?

 

Thx

[HankP]

BTW, I downloaded PDN from the MS store and paid for it rather than downloading free, thinking that I was doing something nice for the folks who spend time maintaining the program.  Stupid of me.  I had no idea that MS hides the damned executable files, if you pay for the program.

 

I was going to just try to solve my problem, by copying the old files to my new directory, but I have no ACCESS to the new directory.

 

Pardon the rant, but why the HELL do I get LESS access by paying money?

[Rick Brewster]

You don't actually need access to the installation folder. You don't need to copy it to a new computer. You just go to the Store and re-install it. Should only take a few seconds.

 

As for plugins, as long as you installed them to your Documents folder (in "paint.net App Files", as described in the documentation), you can just copy that folder over. If you installed them into the old non-Store's installation directory (e.g. in C:\Program Files\paint.net) then you can just move the plugin folders from there to the Documents location.

[HankP]

Thanks.  New Question.

 

I downloaded something (a plugin?) maybe a year ago that made the content of PDN files viewable in WinExplorer as thumbnails.  Neither the new download of the app nor the plugins that I just copied per your instruction makes those files viewable in Explorer.  They just appear as icons with no thumbs.  Could you point me to whatever I downloaded way back when, that let me see thumbnails of these files..

 

Thx

[Rick Brewster]

Paint.NET already comes with a shell extension that provides thumbnails for .PDN files to Explorer. There isn't anything special you have to do to enable it (in fact there's no way to disable it).

 

However, those thumbnails will not work in certain "cloud" folders, like for OneDrive. The reason is that custom thumbnail handlers ("custom" as in non-Microsoft) are ignored in this case. Custom thumbnail handlers have no way to execute on the cloud server in order to extract and send only the thumbnail to the client, whereas for the common standard file types like PNG and JPEG they do have that code on the server and it is thoroughly vetted for security and performance.

 

The alternative would be for custom thumbnail handlers to download the whole file from the server just for the sake of generating the thumbnail. If you have a folder with 1000 .PDN's and they take up >1GB, this is clearly not a good idea. So the thumbnails are just skipped.

[Rick Brewster]

Having said all that, I don't really understand why they don't enable custom thumbnail handlers for files that are already stored on the local device ...

[HankP]

Thanks for the info.  There is something funky here, probably related to the Win11 upgrade on the new machine.  The folders/PDN files that I am working with have always been on my iCloud drive.  On my old Win10 machine, I saw thumbnails of these files.  On the new Win11 machine, I do not.  I see only the generic PDN file icon.  This is annoying.  I had grown accustomed to seeing the thumbnails.

Edited May 22, 2023 by HankP

[HankP]

Did some troubleshooting for anyone who works on the programming.

 

Moved the directory in question to the local hard drive, and the files displayed thumbnails. 

 

Here is the interesting one.  I then created a link/shortcut TO the PDN file on the hard drive and put that link/shortcut out on the iCloud drive.  The shortcut file DOES display a thumbnail in the folder located out on the iCloud drive.

 

If I leave the PDN file on iCloud and create a link/shortcut to the local drive, the local shortcut does NOT display a thumbnail.

 

If I understand your explanation, this all makes sense EXCEPT for the fact that the PDN files out on the iCloud drive DID display thumbnails when seen with Explorer on my old Win10 machine.  THAT is baffling me.

Edited May 22, 2023 by HankP

[HankP]

I am being a nuisance.

 

The problem I face is that I am working on a very large project that includes image files (GIF, PNG, JPG, etc), Excel files, Word files and a host of other types (including PDN).  I WANT to be able to access the project from anywhere and any device (hence the use of my iCloud drive), so moving the project to a local drive in order to see thumbnails on PDN files is not feasible.  If I move JUST the image files to my local drive on the Win11 machine, I can link/shortcut them to my iCloud drive AND see them when using my win11 computer, but I think I can see only the shortcuts on any other machine (for instance, my iPad) but not even see what the content of the shortcut might be.  I KNOW that I cannot use that link on my iPad to open a file that is stored on the hard drive of my win11 machine.

 

Any ideas?

Edited May 22, 2023 by HankP