Photos Screen Saver has stopped working

[sraconsultingman]

I am testing out Vista Ultimate and everything runs fine except that the
photo screen saver will not preview and immediately responds with an error
message saying, "Photos Screen Saver has stopped working. A problem caused
the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and
notify you if a solution is available." My Pictures has over 10,000 files
but worked fine in XP Professional. Any ideas Microsoft?

[garylane]

Same problem on vista home premium. Worked fine yesterday until I
installed several new programs and fiddled with power management. Tried
to reverse but cannot get it going again. Ideas?:rolleyes:

[cantrelld]

I received exactly the same message about my quilt design software.
Worked fine for the first few days, then would not work. Had received
several automatic windows updates in that time and tried to use
recovery manager to return to previous settings, but that did not work
either. Any ideas?

[Mike Abrams]

I have had the same problem.

It happened once.... I did somehting then it worked.. now it stops also..
..here are some things I noticed.

1) If you change it to CLASSIC mode instead of Random or any other mode it
WILL WORK.. however the Power Management to shut down the monitor doe snot
kick in.

2) If you point it to a directory WITHOUT video it will work (I have the
codecs for all my videos.. It DID used to plkay the cideos in the screen
saver fine).

3) I looked at the error repor tit generated in Problems Reports and
solutions. It seems to point to a problem with the file iac25_32.ax. This
is in the Windows>System 32 directory and has something to do with Indeo. I
actually purchased the Indeo driver pack which works fine to play older Indeo
encoded videos (Ligos).

Anyway.. I hope they cna figure this out.. since these files play fine
everywhere else, they should play in the photo screen saver also.

Anyone else have this issu eplease let me know.. I really liked that saver!
Just like you guys I dont know what caused it. I can play any other videos
without a problem even in Windows Gallery>Media Player....

Can you test those 2 items see if you have the same results.

I hope MS has a fix for this... It

[stanislavf]

I have the exact same problem. I can easily replicate the issue as having to
do with AVI/videos by pointing the photo screensaver to a directory with only
AVIs and it will hang instantly.

It did work earlier. One suspects it has something to do with codecs and/or
other video software, as I have installed a few of these in the past couple
of weeks and that is when it stopped working. (e.g. Media Player Classic, a
GNU open source product). Other upgrades include real networks updates and
other such products.

AVIs play fine in various media players.

I made sure the AVI association is with Windows Media Player, to no avail.

I am sure that like most people, what is so frustrating is this worked fine
initially...and now it does not.

I am having the same problem as everyone else just described...
Can someone help me

Remove any video files from the folder you are using for the Photos Screen
Saver.

[Mike Abrams]

I found if you just use photos and make it look in just a folder with photos,
it will not crash.. BUT it doe snot work.. if I set screen saver for 2 mins
for instance.. it just keeps going.

There is obviously a lot of issues with the photo screeen saver.... As it
DID work very wekk at 1st and now it is affectred by codecs and other things.

Is there a way to sort of reinstall it?

Or somehow get it working

[jaswave]

I didn't try to set up the photo screen saver until I had already put a
lot of stuff on the hard drive, but the first time I tried to use it I
got the error message that it wasn't working. I hope this and some of
the other problems I've encountered since purchasing my first computer
with "Vista" will be fixed in the upcoming service pack.

[petecomp1]

Another Vista Ultimate user, disgusted (not at having the problem but at Microsoft's ignoring it). Still having same problem, worked at first then stopped. Seems to be a common problem. Microsoft must be flooded with photo screensaver stop errors by now (unless the error message is lying, which is quite possible). If past experience is any guide, they will ignore it until someone in the mainstream news media writes an article about it, then will scurry to fix it. Good luck all. Anyone finds the fix, please let us know. We know it's something to do with video codecs.

[peglegSqueeks]

The problem is vista's incompatible, and poor handling of older video codecs.

The fix is:-

1. Go through all codec related installs and remove them ALL.
2. Reboot.
3. Setup Photo screensaver anyway you wish.


It should be working perfectly now. Tested on my system after trying a myriad of other sugestions from many people to no avail.

Suggestion is to make sure all codec install packs are totaly VISTA compatible.

There are Vista codec packs out there.

Best of luck!
PeglegSqueeks

I'm not disabled, I'm ENHANCED!
1 Carbonfibre Leg, titanium fittings, Engergy return system.
2 Titanium Shoulder plate

[zachd [MSFT]]

That's probably accidentally misleading. When a bad codec corrupts memory,
there's not really a great way to handle that. Usually the best you can do
is to run it in special execution contexts so that it only crashes itself,
but that still doesn't fix anything since it would still be broken. =\

I am having problems as well. I have Window's Vista Home Edition. I've saved
many pictures from the net and the screensaver was working fine till a couple
days ago. Now it doesn't come up with my pictures. Instead its a black screen
with "no picture" in the file. I opened my picture file and there are
pictures there. Any ideas??

[venusian]

I have loaded the service pack as soon as I had my new computer with Vista.
The screen saver worked for a few days, then it suddenly did not. No error
messages. My screen continues to show whatever is on dispaly, e.g., desktop,
etc.

same problem here, no error message, it just stays on my desktop background
and never goes to my screensaver, may the Gods be with someone smarter than
me who can help us!

[NaweG]

OK, this is driving me crazy. I've looked at this thread and others both
on here and elsewhere. To avoid all the "known issues", I've created a
directory on an internal drive that has no subdirectories, no videos, no
shortcuts, and no animated GIFs. Even if I choose "classic" instead of
"random", it will go for a while, and then go to the error message.

I've done all the upgrades and I have SP2 installed. Given that this
used to work just fine in XP, I have to wonder how it could be screwed
up now?

If there isn't a solution, can anyone recommend a similar third party
program out there that works? I tried Google's Photo Screensaver, but
you have to manually start it each time.

Given that all the other screensavers work just fine, I have a hard
time believing this is anything other than a buggy module...

[NaweG]

After a lot more investigation, it seems that the problem ties into two
sets of drivers that your machine will run just fine without - except
when it doesn't :)

First are the Intel Chipset or Inf drivers. Second are the Realtek
Audio drivers. I sort of understand the chipset ones since those replace
the default/generic drivers with ones that are tuned (i.e. work better)
for the specific support chips being used. I'm not sure I'm at all clear
on why the Realtek ones make a difference, but adding them in FINALLY
made my Photo Screensaver stable. Which makes me suspect that the Photo
Screensaver is a bit of a canary in the mineshaft for system stability
issues.

Just to try and help save some folks some hair pulling like I've been
through the last few days...

What error message do you get and what other screensavers work fine, oh and
what version of Vista are you running ?

[NaweG]

Well, I guess I spoke too soon, after running for quite some time just
fine, the ugly error reared it's head again. So back to do some more
digging, and I found a group of messages that referenced the PD4 file
that the screensaver creates as it's database of photos to slideshow.
Supposedly deleting that fixes the problem. And in fact it does... for a
while. Evidently whatever is causing that file to have problems/get
corrupted is still happening from time to time. Once it happens, I only
need to let the screensaver run for a bit to get that message. But once
I delete the file again, it can go for several hours.

Since someone asked, I'm running Vista 64 Ultimate on a core i7 3.2 Ghz
with 12 gigs of DDR 3 RAM. All of the other windows screensavers run
just fine... which in some ways is actually more aggrevating :)

I have close to 16000 photos (yeah, I'm a part time photographer) in
the directory that I've been pointing it to, but I get the same problem
from my test directory that only has about 1000 photos.

So, any suggestions that I haven't already tried? :D

[myusername]

THIS IS THE ANSWER!!
FORGET THE WINDOWS PHOTO SCREEN SAVER!!!

USE GOOGLE'S PICASSA!

After downloading Picassa, go to the the "Tools" menu and then select "Configure Screensaver." They let you designate which folder(s) to get the photos, along with several options on how you want the photos to display (pan and zoom, wipes, cross fade, circle, rectangle, checkered, etc.) Really cool!

Google's Photo Screensaver comes up in the list of screensavers in the Windows screen saver configuration tool.

When the screen saver starts, the Google logo is the first "photo" to show up, but to be honest, they deserve the 10 seconds of credit so, let it be. After that, then your photos from your designated folder begin to show.

It's awesome and super simple to setup. AND IT'S ALL FREE!!!! Google is awesome.

SCREW Microsoft!!!