Can't view PNG files - where to find PNG codec?

Britton30 said:

Have you tried a System Restore to before you first installed the WL picture viewer?

Unfortunately there were no system restore points from before I installed WLPG for me to restore to.

whs said:

djeyewater said:

whs said:

Yeah, but that is a basic function that should be available with any picture viewer. I have never heard of anybody installing a codec for that.

Exactly, it should be available, but seems to have been corrupted or deleted. So I need to reinstall it. But I don't know where to get it from?

I am pretty sure that it is an integral part of the component and that a download will not help.

You can try what Gary (Britton30) suggests or you can run a sfc /scannow in cmd and if all that does not help a Repair Install

Unfortunately there were no restore points before WLPG was installed for me to restore to. I also tried running sfc /scannow and it reported no problems:

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

I don't want to run a repair as when I have done that before it has made all installed programs stop working (and so need to be reinstalled). If it comes down to that I might as well do a full format.

I did find that the Windows Imaging Component has a download available, and the description states that it includes the PNG codecs: Download Windows Imaging Component from Official Microsoft Download Centre Unfortunately this doesn't work on Win 7 and I am unable to find a Win7 download of WIC. If the PNG codec is not available as a download, do you know if the WIC for Win 7 can be installed from anywhere?

Or is it possible to install the DLLs from the WIC package designed for older Windows builds? I unpacked it and noticed it contained files like windowscodecs.dll, windowscodecsext.dll, wwindowscodecs.dll, and wwindowscodecsext.dll

It seems I have managed to fix it now. I installed the latest version of the FastPictureViewer Codec pack ( FastPictureViewer Codec Pack: PSD, CR2, NEF, DNG RAW codecs (and more) for Windows 8 Desktop, Windows 7, Windows Vista and XP ), which doesn't list PNG as a codec it installs (either on the webpage or in the install options). But after restarting the computer when the install finished, I can now view PNG files again.

How strange! But at least I have the problem fixed.