Unable to view UDF files in W7 after using W7 built-in writing utility

mattyb515 · 05 Jan 2014

Hello all,

Here's my issue. I used the built-in W7 drag and drop DVD writing utility to create a DVD with a ton of pictures I've taken over the years. It was a DVD/RW disc. I accidentally did a quick format but used MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recovery the pictures. Unfortunately, I'm now unable to open them and picture viewer gives this error "Windows Photo Viewer can't open this picture because either Photo Viewer doesn't support this file format, or you don't have the latest updates to Photo Viewer". I've read that this is typically caused from either Nero or Roxio overwriting some UDF system files within Windows. I don't have either of those installed. The only program I had was ImgBurn but I've uninstalled that. I've also tried to burn the pictures back to a DVD but that hasn't worked either. Any suggestions on what to do?

Thanks,
Matt

MilesAhead · 05 Jan 2014

I'm not sure what happened. Are you stuck with one image file(the image of the disc) or do you have discrete picture files? If you have picture files try installing Irfanview. During install you can associate it with graphics file formats(just click "images only" for file associations if not sure.)

Then double clicking any picture should bring it up. Plus it has a "slide" mode to go through all graphics files in a folder.

mattyb515 · 05 Jan 2014

I have discrete picture files. I was hoping to get them back to a point where I could open them from any computer. It's just so odd that Windows formatted the disc as UDF and now I can't open them.

MilesAhead · 05 Jan 2014

Can you copy the disc contents to a folder? Imgburn or IsoBuster should be able to do it.

mattyb515 · 05 Jan 2014

Copying the files is not a problem. Just to clarify, do you want me to try burning them to a disc with ImgBurn?

MilesAhead · 05 Jan 2014

Right now I'm not clear on what you want to accomplish. Do you want to burn discs to give to others? If so I would just copy out the disc files to an empty folder, then use Folder2Iso to create a disc image. You should be able to burn that image using Imgburn. I know Imgburn can make disc images but I'm assuming Folder2Iso will use the most popular/common settings as default. But I would only burn 1 disc until you are sure it burned as expected.

mattyb515 · 29 Apr 2014

Sorry for the extreme delay in reply.

I'm looking to burn the files back to a disc to take to one of those Kodak self-service kiosks and print some of the pictures out. After recovery and reburn to a disc, I get the error listed in my first post. My fear is that I'll get to one of those kiosks and it won't recognize any of the files, just like my laptop. I've tried IrfanView and when I try to open the recovered files I get the error

"Can't read file header!"
Unknown file format empty file or file not found

Any thoughts?

MilesAhead · 29 Apr 2014

I would try a photography forum. Perhaps someone there would know a program to fix the headers for various graphics formats. I used to burn erasable discs with Imgburn as if they were CDR or DVDR. But Imgburn would make you format them the first burn. Sounds like Windows didn't do that.

If you have a USB I'd copy to that in case you have luck with the file repair program. With all the digital photography going on, someone must have dug themselves out of a similar hole. :)