"Windows photo viewer can't display....."

JustAnotherSaver

OS: Win7 Pro 64bit.

Ok so let's not stick on the fact that the OS is Win7 as I really don't see why that should magically make this an issue UNLESS M$oft released an update which causes this issue. If that isn't the case then I don't see how Win7 can cause this problem.

Onwards....

So basically I can open some images but not others using Windows photo viewer. It's been happening for a while now but only just got round to asking why (& how to fix).

2 examples:

I've had to contact two different people via email this morning, both requiring images sent to them.

One was an actual photograph taken with my phone, the other was a screenshot of something on my phone.

Both images were then uploaded to Google Drive, downloaded to my hard drive & then sent.

If i double click the photograph, it opens.

If i double click the screenshot, I get this message:

My PC has 16GB RAM & I'd only just started it up. It had Chrome open (for Google Drive), Explorer open (for the destination folder I downloaded to), Windows Live Mail I think was also open & then I was trying to open the image.

What gives?

forgotmyname

Screenshot is in a format that photo viewer cannot display.  Convert the image to another format first.

Try paint.net.

Olinda99

WPV is pretty much abandoned by MS and sometimes fails on eg W10. No reason why W7 should change though.

I recommend installing Sourceforge jpegview though is is freeware and much better than WPV

https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/

JustAnotherSaver

forgotmyname said:

Screenshot is in a format that photo viewer cannot display. 

Strange. I just checked what format it was in  - .jpeg.

Just checked what format the picture that i could view was in - .jpeg.

bat999

JustAnotherSaver said: Strange.

I suppose you need to provide some samples of good and bad to analyze.
Instead of people just guessing.

JustAnotherSaver

bat999 said:

JustAnotherSaver said: Strange.

I suppose you need to provide some samples of good and bad to analyze.
Instead of people just guessing.

How are they guessing when I've told them precisely what works and what doesn't?

A screenshot doesn't work.

A photo does.

Both from the same phone, both in .jpeg format.

For super clarification - it's a Samsung Galaxy S10.

TELLIT01

bat999 said:

JustAnotherSaver said: Strange.

I suppose you need to provide some samples of good and bad to analyze.
Instead of people just guessing.

People aren't just guessing.  As the OP has indicated, the problem doesn't seem to have any logic to it.  If all the images are the same format from the same source it's reasonable to expect them all to act in the same way.  As they don't, people are making suggestions on workarounds.  That isn't guessing.

wongataa

Strange.  I would use a different picture viewing software that will hopefully open both.  There are lots out there.

400ixl

You are using an out of support application on an out of support Operating System. There haven't been updates to either for quite some time, so highly unlikely it is related to anything there. More likely the Samsung device has changed something that the Windows app doesn't like anymore. The photo app and the screen shot app will potentially have different rendering engines which may give different result. Quite conceivable it is doing some sort of encoding that is causing a buffer over run in the Windows application which will cause out of memory errors. There are lots of other types of issues which could cause the same.

Ideally you would move off an operating system which should no longer be connected to the internet as it is that vulnerable, but at the very least you could use a different app which doesn't cause an error.

Another option to try is to open the screen shot in the phone photo app and save it into a different format that the Windows app will take such as a PNG which will re-encode the photo, hopefully removing the problem. 

Olinda99

as above - all jpegs are not created equal

JustAnotherSaver

400ixl said:

Ideally you would move off an operating system which should no longer be connected to the internet as it is that vulnerable,

Out of interest, when would you say the same about Windows 10?

Or would you say it now since Windows 11 is already out?