Raw File (.nef) HELP

Im a photographer and have lost touch with computers, windows etc since XP!

I recently lost my hard drive on my toshiba satellite. It was sent back to factory, repaired and had windows 8.1 installed. This is fine cause I had 8 to begin with.

My problem is this.
I USED to be able to open my memory card up filled with raw files, and have all the thumbnails display the actual photo, and have windows picture viewer open them without having to import to photoshop.

Since getting my laptop back i am no longer able to have a preview thumbnail, just a generic icon, and windows pic viewer wont open. So the only way I can view is through photoshop.

Ive searched high and low and can not seem to be able to find a reason, or update that will fix this.
Can someone help me! Its driving me nuts since its easy to scan the card for a particular pic i need rather than importing and converting to jpeg first in PS.

Windows XP never officially did what you describe your old system doing. MS did distribute an unsupported add-in that gave the system the ability to read the thumbnails in RAW files, including Nikon's NEF version. I believe they updated it once or twice before abandoning any further development. Supporting RAW files is a development nightmare as every new camera introduces a slightly different RAW "flavor" requiring constant updating of the reader software.

I'm not aware of any 3rd party add-in for Win8.1 that provide this service for the native Windows Explorer dialogs. There are various "browser" applications that provide their own dialogs for the same purpose. Personally, I use Adobe Lightroom, which might be more powerful than you need.

Addenda:

You might take a look at FastStone Viewer ( FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter ). This is a freeware browser/editor that works quickly and previews most RAW files.

Oh, I didn't mean I used it on XP....all I meant by that was ive lost track of technology since the.....lol.

I used windows 8 before I sent it away. It came back with 8.1 and no longer able to view the files.

I use lightroom too which is fine, But it was much more convenient to be able to just open up the window with the files in it and quick view.

I thought there may of been a fix for this.