Old pictures are distorted after upgrading

[purpleding]

I have upgraded my OS from Windows Vista (32-bit) to Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit). When I browsed some of my old pictures on another hard drive (D drive), the pictures are distorted. When I said distorted, the picture was separated into upper and lower part and on some pictures, a red or green layer was on top of the picture!

I have two hard drives in my computer! D drive was never touched during the upgrade. I only upgraded my OS in C drive! All my pictures are stored in D drive. I am pretty sure when I transferred these pictures from my DC to computer, they look clear and nice! I then checked my backup drive (external one) and those pictures just look nice!!

When I opened the same picture from D drive, the picture is just distorted! I then copy that picture out and view it on another machine which is running Windows XP, the picture was still distorted!!! I don't know why Windows will "change" my old pictures all of a sudden!! And I was very sad because I have many old pictures that are in the same D drive and now, I am scared to open them because I am worried that Windows will change my "good" picture to "distorted".

I have tried to copy 2 pictures from the backup drive and copy back to C/D drive to view. The thumbmail still showed distorted but when I opened the file, they look ok.

I have also compared the 2 files (distorted and non distorted) and everything is exactly the same (i.e Date created, date modified, file size, and all the photo info)

Anyone has experienced this?? Please help!! Those are my lovely babies' pictures! I really don't know how the pictures are changed given that all the timestamp is correct!

I have also updated the display driver but no luck! Those distorted pictures are just for good

The following is my computer's spec:


INTEL CORE 2 QUAD COMPUTER SYSTEM 1.00 703.00 a a 703.00

- ASUS, P5K-SE,S775,INTEL P35,3PCI/2PCI-EX/1PCI-E/4DDR2 1333/1066 M/B

- INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q9300 2.5GHZ CPU

- 4GB KIT (2X 2GB) PC-800

- SEAGATE 500GB, 7200RPM, 32M, SATA2, HARD DRIVE

- ATI RADEON 3650 PCI-E W/ 512MB HDMI

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

 

[Grumpy Old Tom]

I take it that you have some of the pictures on other media (like your camera) but not all of them?

I'm sure someone better will be along to help, but my first thought would be to try the drive in another computer (say, a friend's) that still has Vista It may be only a problem with the program in Windows 7 that it scrambling data that is otherwise OK.

If the pictures are OK, copy them to DVD - yes I'm bad about this as well, but most of mine are now on DVD.

A picture is simply a file full of data in a specified "format". From your description (ie image is distorted, not destroyed) it sounds as though all is not lost, the data should be recoverable somehow.

Best to you,

Grumpy Old Tom

 

[purpleding]

Hi Grumpy Old Tom,

Maybe I should take out the D drive and put it to external drive and try to view it in another machine. I have one XP so do you think I can try on XP first? The picture is divided into upper and lower part and the image is not aligned. It shifted to right or left with distorted color! So sad!

Thanks

 

[jacksonfam]

Hi Purpleding
Did your issue get resolved. I have the exact same thing and it seems it is getting worse each time windows photo gallery accesses my photo database more and more photos become corrupt.

 

[gigagiggles]

If you would try a different picture viewer program and the picture looks fine, then you've eliminated the possibility of corrupt files before and after. And you've narrowed the list of suspects.

If the pictures don't look fine, then we have a major case to solve!

 

[jacksonfam]

I have tried Picasa and still the same issue what is also weird is that in some cases the thumbnail photo is fine but when you open the photo the distortion happens

 

[jacksonfam]

Also I have tried viewing these photos on a win xp machine and the same issue.

 

[gigagiggles]

Just so we are clear what the scenario is:

Pictures are stored in an external hard drive. They may be of recent vintage or much older.

Regardless of machine (gpu), operating system or picture viewer, every picture accessed is distorted in display (but not the thumbnails).

If that is the case, do pictures stored on the internal drive give the same results? In both machines? With different viewers?

 

[jacksonfam]

Picture are now in an external drive, decided to move them to an external drive and then have another backup drive. The strange this is it isn't every picture just select ones. I will attach one so you can see the issue.

 

[gigagiggles]

If it's just select ones, then it could be the backup process or the cable to the hard drive that may have introduced a faulty bit during the transfer, every now and then. 99.9999% effective.

To correct the bad pictures would require knowledge of the format, header and how the compression is encoded to find the faulty bit.

 

[jacksonfam]

So I am stuck in other words?

 

[jacksonfam]

And what is funny is the thumbnail is perfect.

 

[gigagiggles]

< So I am stuck, in other words? >

You've already confirmed, more or less, regardless of machine, OS, software and location of the select files, the files are corrupted. Unless you know how to dig into the headers and figure out where the fault lies, the select files will remain faulty.

 

[vaidas3]

And what is funny is the thumbnail is perfect.

thumbnails are cached in different file so may not represent true state of the picture.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I had problems with some of my pictures being vertically compressed when I switched from XP to Win 7. I changed the default picture viewer from Win 7's to the one that comes with Office 2007 Home and Student. Problem solved.