Duplicate pictures in Windows Photo Gallery

My HP Photo Essentials Program stop working. Microsoft advised that I
remove Photo Essentials which I did. I then went to my Windows Photo Gallery
and found that I had as many as 17 duplicate copies of all my photos. If I
remove just one copy to the recycle bin it also removed the original copy
from "My Pictures".
1. Can anyone tell me why this happened?
2. Is there a way that I can remove these pictures from my photo gallery
without removing the picture from the "My Picture file?
I wish you all a happy new year and mine will also be happy if any one can
give me some help with this frustrating problem. Thanks
Dick

It sounds like you have multiple thumbnails for each photo.
The images you see in Windows Photo Gallery are thumbnails of the actual
photo. Sometimes the
thumbnail database gets messed up. You can force a rebuild, by deleting or
renaming it.

The C:\Users\[username]\AppData folder is hidden, so you can't see it until
you change your settings to show hidden files. To show hidden files, open
Windows Explorer, click on "Organize", select "Folder & Search Options",
Select "View", check "Show hidden files and folders", OK

Close WPG, then go to
C:\Users\(youraccount)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\

Rename Pictures.pd4 to Pictures.pd4.old, and re-open WPG to see if that
helps.

Dave,
Thank you so much for your response. I followed your excellent instructions
but was on able to remove the duplicate pictures. In looking back at the
"windows photo gallery " I find that the "pictures. pd4" always returned
along with "pictures.pd4.old". I tried to delete it but it would still came
back.
Again thank you for any help you can give me.