problem displaying png file

[Jo-Anne]

I'm using WinXP SP3 and IE8. I downloaded a .png file yesterday, and it
won't display in anything other than Windows Picture & Fax Viewer. If I try
to open it in Microsoft Office & Picture Manager (which is the default
program for opening it) or any other program, all I get is the little red X
in a box. I Googled this file format and found lots of problems with it in
WinXP, but they seem to vary.

Is there perhaps an easy fix?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

 

[olfart]

I'm using WinXP SP3 and IE8. I downloaded a .png file yesterday, and it
won't display in anything other than Windows Picture & Fax Viewer. If I
try to open it in Microsoft Office & Picture Manager (which is the default
program for opening it) or any other program, all I get is the little red
X in a box. I Googled this file format and found lots of problems with it
in WinXP, but they seem to vary.

Is there perhaps an easy fix?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

download free Format Factory from http://www.pcfreetime.com/ and convert it
to a file type you can read.
Really great program.
also you moght try chaning the extension from .png to ,jpeg or .gif and see
if that works for you

 

[Nil]

I'm using WinXP SP3 and IE8. I downloaded a .png file yesterday,
and it won't display in anything other than Windows Picture & Fax
Viewer. If I try to open it in Microsoft Office & Picture Manager
(which is the default program for opening it) or any other
program, all I get is the little red X in a box. I Googled this
file format and found lots of problems with it in WinXP, but they
seem to vary.

Is there perhaps an easy fix?

Fix for what? What is it exactly that you want to do? Is it important
that display this one png file in the Office picture manager? Why not
just use another program to view it, or convert it to jpg or gif or
something?

I'm not aware of any particular problems with XP dealing with png
images. I've never encountered any.

I recommend Irfanview for viewing images. It can open just about any
format you throw at it, and it can do some basic editing tasks like
resizing, color and contrast operations, conversions, etc.

 

[Jo-Anne]

download free Format Factory from http://www.pcfreetime.com/ and convert
it to a file type you can read.
Really great program.
also you moght try chaning the extension from .png to ,jpeg or .gif and
see if that works for you

Thank you! I'll check out that program. I tried changing the extension, but
it still wouldn't display--same red X in a box.

Jo-Anne

 

[Jo-Anne]

Thank you! I'll check out that program. I tried changing the extension,
but it still wouldn't display--same red X in a box.

Jo-Anne

I finally got it to work. I opened the png file in Paint and saved it as a
jpeg. The first time I tried opening the jpeg in Microsoft Office & Picture
Manager, I still got the red X. Then I tried one more time, and this time it
displayed the image.

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne

 

[Jo-Anne]

Fix for what? What is it exactly that you want to do? Is it important
that display this one png file in the Office picture manager? Why not
just use another program to view it, or convert it to jpg or gif or
something?

I'm not aware of any particular problems with XP dealing with png
images. I've never encountered any.

I recommend Irfanview for viewing images. It can open just about any
format you throw at it, and it can do some basic editing tasks like
resizing, color and contrast operations, conversions, etc.

The "fix" is to enable it to open in any of the usual programs. This file is
one I have to send to a colleague, and I'll look bad if she can't open and
display its image easily. I generally don't tell others which programs to
use. It's assumed that images will display as they should regardless of the
program used to open them (assuming the program is intended for this use).

I had tried changing the extension, and I had tried saving the file with a
jpg extension. Neither worked at first. On my last try--saving the image in
Paint as a jpg--it suddenly began opening properly in Microsoft Office &
Picture Manager. It took a few tries for this to happen, but it seems to
work now.

Thank you for the suggestion of Irfanview. I'll check it out.

Jo-Anne

 

[Dick Burns]

You can't simply change the extension, that does't work. You must convert
the image.

 

[Nil]

It's assumed that images will display as they should regardless of
the program used to open them (assuming the program is intended
for this use).

That's not a very good assumption. Not everybody has the same programs,
and there is some variation even among standard formats. I had never
heard of anyone having trouble with png files, and my copy of the
Microsoft Office 2003 Picture Manager (which I had never even used
before today) opened every png file I have available. I can only
conclude that there is something funky about that one particular file
you have. So, the real fix is to replace the file.

If nothing else, you should be able to drag and drop the picture onto
your web browser to view it.

 

[Jo-Anne]

That's not a very good assumption. Not everybody has the same programs,
and there is some variation even among standard formats. I had never
heard of anyone having trouble with png files, and my copy of the
Microsoft Office 2003 Picture Manager (which I had never even used
before today) opened every png file I have available. I can only
conclude that there is something funky about that one particular file
you have. So, the real fix is to replace the file.

If nothing else, you should be able to drag and drop the picture onto
your web browser to view it.

The image is a company's logo. I had received permission to use it and
needed to get it from the company's website. When I clicked on the image, I
was asked if I wanted to save it or open it. Opening it didn't work in my
browser (IE8) or anywhere else, so I saved it--and then began figuring out
how to view it. It seems that re-saving it as a jpg has finally worked.

Jo-Anne

 

[Jo-Anne]

Thank you, Dick! I found that out. Even converting the image didn't work at
first--but now it seems to be OK. I have no idea why it took a few tries to
get it to display...

Jo-Anne

 

[Tim Slattery]

The image is a company's logo. I had received permission to use it and
needed to get it from the company's website. When I clicked on the image, I
was asked if I wanted to save it or open it. Opening it didn't work in my
browser (IE8)

That's' a red flag right there. IE8 should have no problem with PNG
files. There must be something non-standard about this one.

 

[Jo-Anne]

That's' a red flag right there. IE8 should have no problem with PNG
files. There must be something non-standard about this one.

Thank you, Tim! That could well be the case. Oddly, though, it's a major
company, and this logo is the most popularly requested image, according to
the website.

Jo-Anne

 

[Hot-Text]

An easy fix Website:http://www.irfanview.com/

 

[Hot-Text]

Having trouble with .png file, received permission to use!
We Webmaster do a JPG image file and just name logo.png
all it is a jpg>> so if you open it in just a browser to copy it, it will
not be view!

So Tim Slattery IE8 have no problem with PNG file just the lie the
Webmaster give the browser!
Making you saying Right: There must be something non-standard about this
one.

 

[Nil]

Thank you, Dick! I found that out. Even converting the image
didn't work at first--but now it seems to be OK. I have no idea
why it took a few tries to get it to display...

That's another nice thing about Irfanview - if you give it an image
with an incorrect extension, it will offer to change it for you.

 

[Mike S]

There is also XnView, another neat Viewer program. (I think it's a bit more
full featured than Irfanview, but I could be wrong, at least in some
respects. One thing it does offer is a file explorer pane on the left -
maybe Irfanview can do that too, but if, so I've missed it).

I like XnView, and for people who want a simple image editor I recommend
Irfanview, it's free and not too complicated. Photoshop is a lot more
powerful but it's also a lot more expensive and it has a bit of a
learning curve, and GIMP doesn't seem to be easy to learn for the people
I've recommended it to.

 

[Nil]

There is also XnView, another neat Viewer program. (I think it's
a bit more full featured than Irfanview, but I could be wrong, at
least in some respects. One thing it does offer is a file
explorer pane on the left - maybe Irfanview can do that too, but
if, so I've missed it).

Irfanview can be kind of like that if you use its Thumbnail View. You
get a file tree in the left pane, and thumbnails of the images on the
right, on which you can do various operations (move, copy, rename,
edit, etc.)

 

[Paul]

Thank you, Tim! That could well be the case. Oddly, though, it's a major
company, and this logo is the most popularly requested image, according to
the website.

Jo-Anne

According to this, PNG contains elements of a "container format",
meaning PNG is extensible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics

Ideally, you'd want a tool that could display the fourCC-like chunk codes,
to see why the file is being rejected by your tool flow. I wasn't able
to find something I could get working. (And one validator site I
tried, *failed* to detect the following example as being bad.)

This is an example of a PNG crafted as an exploit. Clicking on
it here in Firefox, gives "cannot be displayed, because it
contains errors". In Explorer, it gives the red X.

https://lwn.net/Articles/96635/

http://scary.beasts.org/misc/pngtest_bad.png

So that PNG was made bad on purpose. And the exploit should
have been patched 6 years ago, which is why Firefox can detect
it. That is why I was willing to click on it.

It's also possible, your AV software would have picked that up.
If I scan "pngtest_bad.png" on virustotal, it triggers a response
from a lot of AV tools (even though the bug should have been
patched years ago).

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan...1b2773a11505b613206fb192805ea0a690-1263029003

Paul

 

[Jo-Anne]

Fix for what? What is it exactly that you want to do? Is it important
that display this one png file in the Office picture manager? Why not
just use another program to view it, or convert it to jpg or gif or
something?

I'm not aware of any particular problems with XP dealing with png
images. I've never encountered any.

I recommend Irfanview for viewing images. It can open just about any
format you throw at it, and it can do some basic editing tasks like
resizing, color and contrast operations, conversions, etc.

After you and others recommended Irfanview, I installed it, and it works
wonderfully. Thank you! I decided to set it as the default viewer for png
files.

Jo-Anne

 

[Jo-Anne]

Thank you! I installed it, and it does work well.

Jo-Anne