corrupted photos

[Guest]

I'm at my wit's end. Several(in the hundreds) of my photos have corrupted.
Some of them I can see the thumbnail and some I can't. Regardless, whenever I
try to open them I get the error "cannot determine type." I can't copy, move
or delete them. My virus scanner even won't scan them saying that windows has
locked the file. Anytime I try any action at all with them, I get the error
message. "Cannot perform this action. Windows has locked the file" When I
pull up the properties of the pictures, everything looks normal except one
thing. The modified date of the picture is a date before the picture was even
created. Example "created 10-10-07" "modified 9-17-07" Each and every one of
the photos affected are the same date situation, but not identical dates.
There are clusters of the bad pictures together and also spread out in many
different folders and there really is no discernable pattern. I've tried safe
mode and still the same thing, I can't copy, move or delete them at all. No I
can't burn them either. I've also phyiscally removed the hard drive from the
computer and put into a USB enclosure, connected it to another computer and
tried to open the pictures- same thing, can't copy, move, open or even
delete. There are a lot of irreplaceable pictures that I would love to be
able to salvage. It looks like a registry problem has occured. Other than
this wonderful picnic, the computer is running fine. Any help would be
appreciated.

 

[John Inzer]

I'm at my wit's end. Several(in the hundreds) of my photos have
corrupted. Some of them I can see the thumbnail and some I can't.
Regardless, whenever I try to open them I get the error "cannot
determine type." I can't copy, move or delete them. My virus scanner
even won't scan them saying that windows has locked the file. Anytime
I try any action at all with them, I get the error message. "Cannot
perform this action. Windows has locked the file" When I pull up the
properties of the pictures, everything looks normal except one thing.
The modified date of the picture is a date before the picture was
even created. Example "created 10-10-07" "modified 9-17-07" Each and
every one of the photos affected are the same date situation, but not
identical dates. There are clusters of the bad pictures together and
also spread out in many different folders and there really is no
discernable pattern. I've tried safe mode and still the same thing, I
can't copy, move or delete them at all. No I can't burn them either.
I've also phyiscally removed the hard drive from the computer and put
into a USB enclosure, connected it to another computer and tried to
open the pictures- same thing, can't copy, move, open or even delete.
There are a lot of irreplaceable pictures that I would love to be
able to salvage. It looks like a registry problem has occured. Other
than this wonderful picnic, the computer is running fine. Any help
would be appreciated.

=======================================
I don't know if the following links will solve the
problem but maybe they will offer some ideas.

Good luck.

Repair image file type associations in Windows XP
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/imgassofix.htm

Windows® XP File Association Fixes
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

PC Inspector File Recovery
http://tinyurl.com/70lc

PixRecovery
http://www.officerecovery.com/pixrecovery/


--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Michael J. Mahon]

I'm at my wit's end. Several(in the hundreds) of my photos have corrupted.
Some of them I can see the thumbnail and some I can't. Regardless, whenever I
try to open them I get the error "cannot determine type." I can't copy, move
or delete them. My virus scanner even won't scan them saying that windows has
locked the file. Anytime I try any action at all with them, I get the error
message. "Cannot perform this action. Windows has locked the file" When I
pull up the properties of the pictures, everything looks normal except one
thing. The modified date of the picture is a date before the picture was even
created. Example "created 10-10-07" "modified 9-17-07" Each and every one of
the photos affected are the same date situation, but not identical dates.
There are clusters of the bad pictures together and also spread out in many
different folders and there really is no discernable pattern. I've tried safe
mode and still the same thing, I can't copy, move or delete them at all. No I
can't burn them either. I've also phyiscally removed the hard drive from the
computer and put into a USB enclosure, connected it to another computer and
tried to open the pictures- same thing, can't copy, move, open or even
delete. There are a lot of irreplaceable pictures that I would love to be
able to salvage. It looks like a registry problem has occured. Other than
this wonderful picnic, the computer is running fine. Any help would be
appreciated.

I hate to say it, but someone has to--that's what backups are for. ;-(

-michael

Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."

 

[John Inzer]

I hate to say it, but someone has to--that's what backups are for. ;-(
-michael

==============================
No, someone doesn't have to say it.

Don't you think the OP is in enough pain
over the corrupted files without someone
twisting the knife?

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Guest]

Thank you John for your links and suggestions, It can't hurt and I'm going to
try. And thank you Michael for stating the obvious, now explain this one to
me "Mr. Smarty Pants." Why is it that the ones that I do have on a backup CD
and DVD are not able to be opened on that computer? By the way I have copied
them to a seperate folder succesfully, but the same thing, I can't open them,
copy them, rename, move or delete them in. Now I have another folder that I
can't touch.

Have a nice day :þ

 

[Guest]

Well I just found out another issue. The photos on the backup won't open on
another computer either. It seems that in the backup process something
happened and screwed up the backup and the originals. Hmm

 

[Michael J. Mahon]

Sorry to have inspired rancor when I was actually trying to
make the point that backups, which many people still do not
create, have real value. Unfortunately, this only becomes
clear when they are needed. ;-(

It seems worth pointing out that a backup does not exist until
it has been successfully read back. This often omitted step
should be done immediately after completing the backup, and
should preferably be done by *comparing* the backed-up files with
the originals. It is unfortunate that many "backup" programs,
in the interest of speed, either do not provide or make it easy
to bypass this critical step.

This is not a trivial point, since many major companies with well-
established periodic backup policies have had failures, only to
find that their backup media is not readable. It can happen to
anyone.

BTW, when people experience serious disasters, one of the things
they most often regret losing the most are their family photos.
Digital technology for the first time makes it easy to have
multiple copies of all important files, with at least one copy
stored "off site" for protection against physical disaster.

It's worthwhile to periodically put a few DVDs in your safe deposit
box, and/or exchange them with a friend or relative some distance
away. This personal "disaster recovery plan" can virtually
eliminate the possibility of losing precious files.

It may be that your CD and DVD were written with "packet writing"
drivers (common for "drag and drop" copies), and are not complete
"sessions" that many readers will expect. There are recovery programs
for optical media, too, that can read data from such discs.

I hope you are successful in recovering your pictures.

-michael

Well I just found out another issue. The photos on the backup won't open on
another computer either. It seems that in the backup process something
happened and screwed up the backup and the originals. Hmm

:

I expect that the OP's level of pain is pretty high
regardless of my response.

I think that one purpose of a public forum is to teach
others how to avoid problems. It is far to easy to assume
that "It won't happen to me."

-michael

Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

I had a similar problem with an unreadable CD containing JPG images.
Fortunately I had another copy (readable) but as a matter of interest I
downloaded Unstopcp.zip, about 70 KB, which claimed to retrieve such data.
It did recover a majority of the files on the unreadable disc, so perhaps it
could assist you. It might be worth searching Google for other recovery
programs - if you haven't already done so.

Hope this helps,

Jim.

 

[JR]

It's very possible that you might have a virus roaming around. Do a
complete scan of your system. It is also possible that your anti-virus
locked the files. Check for a virus first and if nothing, disable the AVG
system and see if you can get access to the photos. Regards

 

[ric]

I'm at my wit's end. Several(in the hundreds) of my photos have corrupted.
Some of them I can see the thumbnail and some I can't. Regardless, whenever I
try to open them I get the error "cannot determine type." I can't copy, move
or delete them. My virus scanner even won't scan them saying that windows has
locked the file. Anytime I try any action at all with them, I get the error
message. "Cannot perform this action. Windows has locked the file" When I
pull up the properties of the pictures, everything looks normal except one
thing. The modified date of the picture is a date before the picture was even
created. Example "created 10-10-07" "modified 9-17-07" Each and every one of
the photos affected are the same date situation, but not identical dates.
There are clusters of the bad pictures together and also spread out in many
different folders and there really is no discernable pattern. I've tried safe
mode and still the same thing, I can't copy, move or delete them at all. No I
can't burn them either. I've also phyiscally removed the hard drive from the
computer and put into a USB enclosure, connected it to another computer and
tried to open the pictures- same thing, can't copy, move, open or even
delete. There are a lot of irreplaceable pictures that I would love to be
able to salvage. It looks like a registry problem has occured. Other than
this wonderful picnic, the computer is running fine. Any help would be
appreciated.

Take this at face value: it is probably worth getting a professional
to look at this for you. If you *really* need the images back, then
using various data recovery bits of software may well make it worse.
I can recommend a UK data recovery firm (www.retrodata.co.uk) but I
suspect you're in the US.

What I'd suggest first of all is as before, remove hard disk and put
in a USB enclosure and look at it on a different PC. If you get error
messages that you don't have permissions to access files, then under
XP right click on the folder, choose "properties", "security", "take
ownership" and take ownership of all files, then try again.

If this doesn't work, it's a corrupt directory and I'd suggest talking
to a professional. There is a lot of software that tries to recover
data but it doesn't always work and sometimes makes things worse. PC
File Inspector's not bad for image recovery.

Hopefully your backups on CD may be OK: depending on how you've burned
them, you may have used packed CD writing, and just not have the
packet CD software on the second PC you tried reading it on.

At this stage, the more you fiddle with it, the bleaker it looks: if
it's a virus, then the longer your machine's on the worse it could
get. It's *not* a registry problem, though.

Post back with results of sticking the disk in another PC and taking
ownership and I'll do what I can.

Ric

 

[TGB]

I have had the same problem. I can now identify when the problem has
happened but I can't explain it.

Every corrupted jpg file is one that I put onto CD by right-clicking and and
then "send to ..." the CD drive. However, I had some problems with the CD
drive and I had to repeat it a number of times of times to get the CD written
successfully.

In every case that this has happened, the original files have been
corrupted. The file size is correct but something has been written (to the
header) that means other software can no longer handle the file.

Don't know if this is helpful but the lesson for me is NEVER, EVER use send
to. I know use Nero.

Regards / TGB

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

Hi: There might be a difficult and tedious solution to your problem.
A recent Poster stated exactly what Hex data a JPG file should start with:
FF etc. Should be easy to find on this NG
If you have nothing to lose, which appears to be the case, then you will
find at

http://www.softcircuits.com/cygnus/fe/ - cygnusfe.zip

a freeware Hex editor which should enable you to look at the start of each
JPG file to manually change, (or if a prefix has been added, to delete)
the offending Hex numbers.
As you probably won't be able to work on copies, you'll need to take some
care, but I can't see that you have any other option, while this should
offer a
good chance of full recovery.
Good luck,

Jim.

 

[EECUL43]

I too have a ton of [priceless] .JPG files that have mysteriously become
corrupt (I get a "can't determine type" error every time I try to open them
(using Microsoft Photo Editor and Windows Photo Gallery). MS Paint reported
"Paint cannot read this file. This is not a valid bitmap file, or its
format is not currently supported." ACDSee Photo Manager 10 gave no error;
it simply displayed a blank window when I tried to open/view any of the
corrupt files. I tried PixRecovery but it reported "no data to recover
detected" on all attempts. Anyone had success with any other recovery
programs? Thanks.

I'm at my wit's end. Several(in the hundreds) of my photos have
corrupted. Some of them I can see the thumbnail and some I can't.
Regardless, whenever I try to open them I get the error "cannot
determine type." I can't copy, move or delete them. My virus scanner
even won't scan them saying that windows has locked the file. Anytime
I try any action at all with them, I get the error message. "Cannot
perform this action. Windows has locked the file" When I pull up the
properties of the pictures, everything looks normal except one thing.
The modified date of the picture is a date before the picture was
even created. Example "created 10-10-07" "modified 9-17-07" Each and
every one of the photos affected are the same date situation, but not
identical dates. There are clusters of the bad pictures together and
also spread out in many different folders and there really is no
discernable pattern. I've tried safe mode and still the same thing, I
can't copy, move or delete them at all. No I can't burn them either.
I've also phyiscally removed the hard drive from the computer and put
into a USB enclosure, connected it to another computer and tried to
open the pictures- same thing, can't copy, move, open or even delete.
There are a lot of irreplaceable pictures that I would love to be
able to salvage. It looks like a registry problem has occured. Other
than this wonderful picnic, the computer is running fine. Any help
would be appreciated.

=======================================
I don't know if the following links will solve the
problem but maybe they will offer some ideas.

Good luck.

Repair image file type associations in Windows XP
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/imgassofix.htm

Windows® XP File Association Fixes
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

PC Inspector File Recovery
http://tinyurl.com/70lc

PixRecovery
http://www.officerecovery.com/pixrecovery/

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk