PDF previews are shown as icons instead of thumbnails in Windows Explorer

This is a known bug particular to version 8.0.2 that will be addressed in the next release.

Solution

1.    Follow this link to download a preview plug-in file.  

2.    Suppose you have Foxit Reader/Foxit PhantomPDF installed on “C:\Program Files (x86)\>”, you should save this downloaded file to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Shell Extensions” or “C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit PhantomPDF\Shell Extensions”.

3.    Register the downloaded preview plug-in:

1)   Click on the Start Menu and select the Run item.

2)   Type cmd in the field and right click the result and choose 'run as administrator' to run it.

3)   A terminal window will appear on the screen. Run command regsvr32.exe <path of the plug-in> to re-register the plug-in. For example,

regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Shell Extensions\FoxitThumbnailHndlr_x64.dll"

4. Restart Windows File Explorer and try again.

Right-click on Windows task bar to open Task Manager, then go to Processes > right-click on Windows Explorer to End task,  then go to File > Run new task > input explorer.exe to restart Windows File Explorer.

If this preview plug-in doesn’t resolve it, consider to downgrade to the previous version as a workaround.