Saving and Accessing Photos in Windows XP

When this occurs do you get any error messages?

NO - NO ERROR MESSAGE -- JUST THE LOUD SOUND ALERTS ME (TASK MANAGER SAYS THE CPU IS RUNNING AT 100%)

What exactly does the Task manager indicate? Running? Not Responding?

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLEARER -- YES, THE TASK MANAGER SHOWS THAT PROCESS IS "NOT RESPONDING" - WHATEVER IT IS (WORD FOR INSTANCE).

What do you mean by "jammed"?

THAT PROCESS/PROGRAM IS UNRESPONSIVE. IF I AM IN WORD I WILL BE FORCED TO USE THE TASK MANAGER TO END THE PROGRAM. OTHER PROGRAMS IN USE ARE FINE HOWEVER.


Do you have to restart the computer?

NO. OTHER PROGRAMS CONTINUE TO RUN.

If so, immediately after restarting, or what ever you have to do to get it un"jammed", go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. See if there are any errors or warnings in Applications or System that may relate to the problem. If there are, double click on the error/warning and copy the error\warning data and paste it to another post.

Charlie

THANKS CHARLIE -- I HOPE THAT YOU HAVE AN IDEA OR TWO. BOB

Can you open the folders these photos are in with Explorer? eg your My Documents > My Pictures window or wherever you store these photos? If not, what happens?

The two thoughts I have are;

1] Sometimes some images can be corrupted, and using Explorer, (not Internet Explorer but Windows Explorer like the My Documents window), it tries to show thumbnails of the images but fails with corrupted images. That causes Explorer to freeze or to fail.

2] Do you have a home network? If so, are any hard drives or folders on any other networked computer "mapped" to this computer? If they are and the network is not on, then Explorer and the Browse options in Word or Outlook will search for the mapped drives/folders. Eventually it will time out and list the locations it can find, but this will seem like it has frozen or stopped responding.

Mark

Those are good thoughts.

1. On the first one, is there a way for me to verify that there is corruption? I regularly run Nortons and Spyware Dr.

2. Yes, I have a home network - but it stays on all the time.

Just a point about corrupted images. Norton's and Spyware Doctor would not identify if an image file is corrupted. If it has a virus then yes, but not if the file simply doesn't work.

If I were you I would try and open the folder where your images are using Windows Explorer. See if it opens the folder, and if it does, see if it displays all the images when thumbnails are selected from the View options. If necessary, test each one. You may have a slide show application that can do that for you quicker than opening each file.

About the network. Are any of the drives or folders on the other computers "mapped" to this computer? They should show up in My Computer.

Mark

I did what you said and found that a couple of small directories are full of images (photos), taken recently, which cannot be opened. I assume these are corrupted.

Most of the others are not -- I have thousands of photos (Luckily have I have a Maxtor backupdrive that is on my shelf on which I stored most of my harddrive months ago).

I am trying PixRecovery - but it cannot open the corrupted files either - just goes back into the "stall" mode where CPU runs 100% and the program freezes ("Not Responding").

1. Other ideas about saving the corrupted files;

2. Ideas of how they might have become corrupted?

Thanks -- this is centering in on the problem it seems.

bob

When I had Internet Explorer 7 installed, I could NOT access my photos from my camera, watch the videos from my camera or upload my pictures.

I removed Internet Explorer 7, it then reverts back to Internet Explorer 6 and presto, everything worked.

It's just a longshot but might work.

If you want to try it directions are below.

go to control panel

add/remove programs

show updates

click on Internet Explorer 7

click on remove. You'll be prompted with, these programs were installed and my not work properly, click ok and follow the instructions.

After you restart your computer, you will then have Internet Explorer 6 back. See if you can now access your photos.


Rick

Guys, I noticed I am still IN IE -- version 6.0.290

So, I guess that is not going to be a lucky fix for me. I will try another of the corrupted files fixer programs.

QUESTION - What are the most likely reasons that a recent set of pictures would be corrupted?

THanks again,
Bob

you cannot use certain characters when saving files and photos.

Do any of these have any characters?


Rick

Good thought. My files from my sony jpg downloads are all similar - "DSC10001, DSC10002" etc.

Some people who have upgraded from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7, (whether they upgraded manually or whether their Windows Automatic Updates upgraded it), have reported problems afterwards, and not just with browsing the internet. Microsoft integrated IE and Windows Explorer some years ago into the Windows Operating System, meaning it is not easy to remove them, without pulling the OS apart, and IE7 has seemed a bit buggy to some.

However if yours is a new computer or new system you may have had IE7 from the start, and that might be difficult to downgrade to IE6. I have not heard of IE7 corrupting images, but that might be an avenue to explore if all else fails.

If you have tried an image recovery utility and it has failed, then I am not sure what else can be done to recover those images. You could try something like Irfanview from http://www.irfanview.com/ , a simple image display and editor that has many features. I haven't used it myself but many members recommend it. Possibly it will be able to open these corrupted image files, or at least browse the folders they are in. Then you can try re-saving them, or if that fails, deleting them.

This is the problem though. If you cannot open the folders to see inside, and to delete these corrupted files, using Windows Explorer or Irfanview, then they are stuck there, and that is likely to cause continuing problems trying to attach images into emails or Word.

However, if those directories/folders can be set not to open in Thumbnail mode, then Windows Explorer should at least be able to list all the files and from there you can attempt to open each individual file and if it fails, delete the file. That would be simple to achieve if those folders are not inside the My Documents/My Pictures folders. But if they are, then the default view is Thumbnail view.

To change all folders' view from Thumbnail to "List", or "Details", use Windows Explorer and select any folder, make sure it lists files in either List or Details, then goto Tools > Folder options, then the View tab, and click the option that says, "Apply, {Folder views} to All Folders". This will change all views to that one for all folders except the system ones like My Pictures. Then you should be able to open those folders for further investigation.

If those corrupted files are in My Pictures then it is more difficult. I would try rebooting into Safe Mode and opening the folders from there. In Safe Mode many of the graphical features of full Windows are turned off, and so you may then be able to access those folders.

If you can, then you can at least cut and paste them out of My Pictures and locate them eslewhere where you can at least open the folders in Normal full Windows mode. Or you can delete them.

If all that fails, then you still have Rick's idea.

Why do images become corrupted? I don't know. But it could be signs of various things, like virus damage, or a hard disk with errors or badly fragmented, or it could be just a bad batch.

Mark