Windows Photo Viewer is insanely SLOW!

I'm running Windows 7 x64 Home Premium.
Pictures take several seconds to load on Windows Photo Viewer, especially when I'm switching from one picture to another. And it's not my computer that's causing it be slow, because I've got 2GB of RAM. When I had Windows XP, I never had that problem with the Windows picture viewer.

What should I do? Is there some other picture-viewing program that I can use that will work faster?

try Irfanview---it's a free download and most excellent.

S35 said:

I'm running Windows 7 x64 Home Premium.
Pictures take several seconds to load on Windows Photo Viewer, especially when I'm switching from one picture to another. And it's not my computer that's causing it be slow, because I've got 2GB of RAM. When I had Windows XP, I never had that problem with the Windows picture viewer.

What should I do? Is there some other picture-viewing program that I can use that will work faster?

I agree Irfanview is my viewer of choice, it also has a most excellent slideshow feature. Do you add comments at all to your images, maybe you add a lot of exif detail to your images, just a theory on why images are loading slow.

Windows Photo Viewer is insanely SLOW!

SOLUTION - At some stage you probably color calibrated your display using the tool in Windows 7. As soon as you remove this calibration profile speed will return to normal.

Right Click Desktop -> Screen Resolution -> Advanced Settings -> Color Management -> Color Management -> Advanced -> Change System Defaults

Then click on the default profile (the one you are using now) and click Remove. The profile should have some string in it like 'calibrated' ( I forget, I just deleted mine ). Make sure the new default profile does not have the 'calibrated' string in it. When you click Remove you will probably note some change in the screen colors as another profile becomes the default.

Now suddenly the image viewer will be lightning fast.
Go figure.

Spankmaster said:

Windows Photo Viewer is insanely SLOW!

SOLUTION - At some stage you probably color calibrated your display using the tool in Windows 7. As soon as you remove this calibration profile speed will return to normal.

Right Click Desktop -> Screen Resolution -> Advanced Settings -> Color Management -> Color Management -> Advanced -> Change System Defaults

Then click on the default profile (the one you are using now) and click Remove. The profile should have some string in it like 'calibrated' ( I forget, I just deleted mine ). Make sure the new default profile does not have the 'calibrated' string in it. When you click Remove you will probably note some change in the screen colors as another profile becomes the default.

Now suddenly the image viewer will be lightning fast.
Go figure.

thanks!

Thank you Spankmaster, this fixed my issue with windows photo viewer being verrrry slow too. I've had win7 since it first came out and never had this problem before, the only difference was, as you stated, i used the calibration tool last week.

Spankmaster said:

SOLUTION - At some stage you probably color calibrated your display using the tool in Windows 7. As soon as you remove this calibration profile speed will return to normal.

Right Click Desktop -> Screen Resolution -> Advanced Settings -> Color Management -> Color Management -> Advanced -> Change System Defaults

Then click on the default profile (the one you are using now) and click Remove. The profile should have some string in it like 'calibrated' ( I forget, I just deleted mine ). Make sure the new default profile does not have the 'calibrated' string in it. When you click Remove you will probably note some change in the screen colors as another profile becomes the default.

Now suddenly the image viewer will be lightning fast.
Go figure.

Hey, that did it! Thanks a lot Spankmaster :)

Thanks Spankmaster, I have a tendency to push all the buttons on my laptop when I have a problem and I would never have thought to link the speed of my Windows Photo Viewer to my fiddling with the screen colour settings. Cheers.

Thanks Spankmaster

hybridfan said:

I agree Irfanview is my viewer of choice, it also has a most excellent slideshow feature. Do you add comments at all to your images, maybe you add a lot of exif detail to your images, just a theory on why images are loading slow.

I agree to this..you can also try Picasa, which has more feature to manage your pictures..