Vista has corrupted 30% of all of my JPG files

[tewkes]

My HD crashed last week on my old PC. I was not too worried about it since I
had been backing all pictures up to an external USB drive. Bought a new HP
PC with Vista Home Premium. Now when I view JPG files from the external
drive they appear with lines in them and are all jumbled up. Not all files,
but about 30% of them are like this.

Is not...
program -- tried IRfanview, Xnview, many others
memory card (SD) - tried several
camera - tried at least 3
method of download - tried USB and SD card direct in PC memory reader

Even when I put the Ext. drive on an XP laptop, the images all appear the
same now. I have copied and pasted to another drive in the same PC and even
other PCs and no difference.

A few other strange items related... all thumbnails appear okay, but when
opened they are jumbled. Sometimes the files look different - ie. one file
could be jumbled in one program, then okay in another program, sometimes even
in the same program if I log off and back in the files appear different.

I can send copies of the files if anyone is interested. Please help. I am
very concerned that 30% of all photos I have saved the past 9-10 years are
destroyed.

Thanks for your help.

Kris

[John Inzer]

Just wondering...if the bad files are on
the external USB drive and are corrupted
even when viewed from a different computer...
why do you think Vista corrupted them?

[tewkes]

All responses I have received so far are just defending Vista and stating it
must be something I know it is not. Is this a help forum or an advertising
forum for Vista?

[Leythos]

If you have an IT Guy at work, take the camera to him, attach the USB
cable, no need to load any software, copy them to his computer, see if
they are corrupt - if not, burn them to a CD/DVD.

If they are fine at his computer, then go back to your computer,
uninstall any software related to the camera, images, etc... Now,
reboot, and just connect the camera via USB, let the camera be detected,
copy the files to the hard drive, now open them from the hard drive -
are they corrupt?

Have you considered this could be a video card driver problem?

Change your video resolution to 1024x768x16bit color and see if you have
the same problem.

[neofitou]

Can you view other jpg files OK? Can you download the files from one of the
cameras on another computer? Are they OK on that computer? Can you then
transfer them to the Vista computer? Are they still OK?. When
troubleshooting you have to come up with a plan to eliminate possibilities
one at a time. So far the the only possibilities you have eliminated are the
camera and the SD card, as it happens with two different cameras and SD
cards. You now have to bring another computer into play to eliminate the
computer. At this point it really does sound like a problem with USB
transfers. That is what all of the things you have tested have in common.
They have all been used for transfers to/from this computer. The first I'd
do is confirm that the USB drive, cameras, and SD cards work for read/writes
on another computer.

[wbarbourca]

I've been wrestling with this problem for months and think I understand it. It's a USB problem. New Vista USB drivers are not compatible with the firmware on older USB devices. Likely a real time issue. Either Vista has to change, or the firmware on the external device has to change. No one is willing to step up to the plate to provide a solution, as there is no profit in it. That's it. That's all.

Currently your solutions are to either a) replace your devices with newer devices that are still supported and are compatible with or tested against Vista, or b) load both Vista and XP onto your PC and boot up with the OS that best supports what you want to do. I chose the latter and my jpeg problems are gone.

[Nigely]

I recently installed a Vista home basic notebook for a customer, replacing a
windows XP Home desktop.
Most .jpg pictues transferred to the new machine with no problems, but one
set of pictures on a DVD [1200+ images] will not load on the new machine
without up to 60% of them 'greying out' over about 90% of the image.
I can view the complete set on my windows xp pro notebook - NO PROBLEM
whatsoever, but whichever format is used to transfer these to the Vista
notebook results in the same problem - DVD, USB pen, SD card.
The incredible part of it is that when the images are viewed as thumbnails,
whether on the hard-drive of the vista notebool, or by accessing them on any
form of removable media, they initiallly appear as perfect images, almost
immediately followed by the 'grey-over' of over half of the images - you can
watch it happen. No image-viewer software will then display the images
correctly, and I have tried many.
Would appreciate any suggestions on how this issue may be overcome

[mdhausch]

This problem has rendered a computer I purchased for the specific
purpose of hanling images as useless to me...
The computer (hp) should be a super machine... but about all I do with
it is internet and play mp3 files... I have to use my laptop which has
XP on it to handle files...
I too have triend pluggin in external drives, transfering via the card
reader built in to the machine via CD etc.. there should not be a work
around for this... I didn't pay for a work around to my work flow... I
was in the middle of busy season when I discovered the issues... and
didn't have time to stop and fully address it so now I cannot return
this heap of crap... I did try a callto HP and they wanted charge me$$
to talk to me about a problem whith the machine they made:mad: WTF!!!!
ANYbody getting relief???

So has SP1 fixed this? anyone?
or has Microsoft stepped up with a solution?
They want to charge me $$ to discuss this since my vista is
OEM..

[magnatrap]

I corrected this issue by downloading the updated driver for my builtin
NIVIDIA graphics card from the ACER website. I have the ACER Aspire E380
with Vista.

I had the same problem with JPG files in Vista. I would upload pics
from my camera. When I would view them using "thumbnail view" you could
actually see the new pictures get corrupted one at a time. Every 4th or
5th pic would get grayed out partially, or the picture would turn a
strange color. Downloading and updating my NIVIDIA software corrected my
problem. I hope this will help out others.

[magnatrap]

I corrected this issue by downloading the updated driver for my builtin NIVIDIA graphics card from the ACER website. I have the ACER Aspire E380 with Vista.



I had the same problem with JPG files in Vista. I would upload pics from my camera. When I would view them using "thumbnail view" you could actually see the new pictures get corrupted one at a time. Every 4th or 5th pic would get grayed out partially, or the picture would turn a strange color. Downloading and updating my NIVIDIA software corrected my problem. I hope this will help out others.

[Maine51]

I also had the corrupt picture files using Vista on an HP computer. The pictures would first download correctly in the thumbnails and then immediately start "greying" out. Sometimes they were funny colors and other times they looked like a puzzle not put together right. I knew it was this computer because I could take the media card out and put it in my laptop computer with XP operating system and the pictures would be fine. I called HP support several times, read some forums and tried what was suggested and nothing worked. I finally took my computer back to Circuit City yesterday and they replaced the media card drive and said there was a problem with the connection to the USB. I am not "tech smart" so I am not sure just what they meant, but so far the pictures seem to be downloading just fine with thumbnails working as they should...no more greyed-out corrupted pictures. Seems like if it had been a hardware issue, my pictures would have stayed corrupted, but if it was just a software/reading issue that is why the pictures would be ok in an XP operating system? I am just hoping this really did solve my issue...but, I won't hold my breath...after all it is VISTA!

[fredasp]

I have also had similar problems with JPG images that look strange:
different parts of the image mixed up, strange colors, colored stripes,
etc. I can see these effects also in the thumbnails.

What makes my problem maybe even more peculiar is that only the files I
copy to a specific hard drive get corrupted. I have replaced that hard
drive, but the problem remains. The new drive has the same cables and
drive letter as the pevious one. I have two internal hard drives and one
USB disk. It is on my second internal drive (the one not with the OS on
it) that the problem occurs. Copying JPGs to my other drives works fine.
Copying JPGs from these drives or from card readers to my second
internal drive will sometimes produce corrupted images.

Since I have replaced the hard drive I cannot really see what's the
source of the problem? Cables, connectors, driver circuits, Vista,
BIOS???

I have been using my computer (an HP) for about a year before this
problem started to appear.

I also have corrupted RAW and MPEG files. I haven't discovered any other
corrupted files (I haven't tested with GIF or BMP)

[Gary S. Terhune]

Test some non-image files. Zip files, CAB files, EXE files (like
NOTEPAD.EXE, from the Windows folder, and REGEDIT.EXE, WINPOPUP.EXE,
CALC.EXE.), all of these will be easy to test. Also DOC files if you have
Word, that kind of thing.

Just copy them over and see if they open/function.

I haven't discovered any other types of corrupted files in my previous
tests, but when I tried again yesterday all different types of files got
corrupted, not just images.

Then you definitely have a hardware problem and only a formal t-shooting
will pinpoint it. For instance, try a different cable, next a different SATA
connector on the mobo, and even try yet another HDD.

Is the mobo still under warranty? And why did you let this go on for months?
Computers almost never fix themselves.

[fredb38]

I download Easter pictures from my buddies computer to a thumb drive. All the pictures were good and clear.
I then inserted the thumb drive into my desktop computer and downloaded to a folder.
About 30 % of the pictures in the folder were corrupted. Pictures would get grayed out partially, or the picture would turn a strange color.
I then looked at the pictures on the thumb drive using my computer and they too were corrupted.
I then took the thumb drive and inserted it into my laptop with XP and all the pictures were fine. No corrupted files.
Then I took the thumb drive and tried it on my wife's laptop with Vista and again all were fine. No corrupted files.
Then from my wife's laptop I E-mailed myself four pictures that were corrupted on my computer so that could see if replacing them with a good file would do anything.
After opening the pictures in my E-Mail they were fine. I then copied them to my folder and it worked. The four good pictures replaced the four corrupted files. Now the four pictures in the folder were perfect.
I guess the bottom line is something is going on with my computer and I am not at all sure what it is.
I did update my video driver but that didn't help.
I see others are having this problem but have not seen a cure for it.
Does anybody have cure?

I have googled this problem for three days and found many many people with the same problem but nobody seems to have an answer that works. Not really sure what is causing the problem. Hardware, software, Vista. Have tried to view with picasa, Irfanview, and several other programs but all had the same results.

[JT]

If you are using Vista's default picture viewer program it's a known
issue that picture colors will not look right in some cases. Try viewing
the pictures with a different program or google on how to fix it. It's
something to with the color profile.

That Vista replacement for XP's Windows Picture & Fax Viewer is a total heap
of dog-crap.

Apart from glitching pictures etc as you mention, it won't "Preview"
animated gifs - just shows a static image. Utter crud. And the gibbering,
dribbling lunatics in Microsoft programming cellars say it's an advance!