actually it defaults to thumbnails all the time when a 'new' folder is created with images if I have thumbnails allowed globally - there is a 'set all similar folders' function but it does not work as well as I'd like and no matter how I set that, thumbnails are on the desktop - I may be doing it all wrong of course, but if I set 'never use thumbnails' then the problems go away and that's fine by me

and I don't actually want thumbnails most of the time, I prefer details list

I like windows 8.1 too, given that I have customised it - it is a lot better behaved than previous windows - has some irritations, but every version has those;