How did my pictures time-travel to the future?

[Michael33]

Have you ever seen future dates associated with a file?

I created a new library which included some old pictures that I have stored in my Pictures folder, and then sorted the library according to date modified. It listed 8 pictures (that I haven't looked at for many months, and never modified) with future dates! Here's a screenshot:





What's going on here?!

Michael33

 

[RoWin7]

Is your system date correct?

 

[Michael33]

Yes

 

[mitchell65]

If you double click on one of the files does it open normally? It shouldn't as according to Windows 7 the file does not yet exist!!

 

[Michael33]

Yes, they all open normally.

 

[mitchell65]

Where did these files come from? did you download them from the internet or are they your original photos?

 

[Michael33]

They are old family photos.

 

[mitchell65]

Hi Michael
Not very helpful, I'm afraid!
"Old Family Photos" to me are black and white prints going back 60 or 70 years whereas many on this Forum have only had experience of the digital age!
Can you enlighten me as to the origin of these files as I am pretty sure that the answer lies in the origin as these appear to be the only files affected?

 

[rvcjew]

Seems the meta data got real screwed up somehow, you should at least be able to make it this year if you want by opening each in photo viewer and rotating them then going to next picture (it will save the rotation data) and when done go back and rotate them back then windows will have last touched them in this current date.

 

[Michael33]

mitchell65 - Yes, they are old B&Ws going back 70+ years. There's nothing special about them; they're just jpegs. It's "not very helpful" because there's nothing more to give you. If I open up the properties it gives me the same date modified as mentioned. The date accessed and date created are different, but the date modified is the same. That's as helpful as I can be.

 

[rvcjew]

Yeah to fix the modified dates just open them in windows photo viewer and rotate them and exit and they will show rotated on the icons which means they were modified then just re-rotate back. Will make the modified date this day and year.

 

[Michael33]

Thanks, but modifying the date modified is not important to me. My bewilderment was simply concerning why/how they could have a future date.

And as a side note, there is obviously code in Windows for identifying files with future dates as "Sometime in the future." So they actually coded that in there. Truly bizarre. I'd like to know the story behind that one.

 

[mitchell65]

As you say "Bizarre".
I see the files are stored on an old "C" drive now "E" drive. I assume this is now an External Hard drive? Have you let Windows give this drive the letter "E"? If so then Windows could change that if you use a USB port or card reader. Your library designated folder would not then find the correct path. It would be better to give that old "C" drive a desiganated letter further up the alphabet like "W,X,Y,orZ.
Have you any other files on "E" drive that you have linked to the Library? If so do they show the same anomoly? If not can you find a couple of files to make a test entry in your Library. In fact create two new folders and link them to your library. Iff possible use scanned images in one folder aand unscanned in the other. I ask this as I feel the problm might lie in the scanning process!

 

[Michael33]

The E drive is an internal partition with my data on it. The folder marked "OLD C DRIVE" is simply a folder with my data from a previous install of Win7 that I labeled as such. It never was the actual C drive folder; it never was a partition with a drive letter. I just called it that; as in, "this is data from the old C drive." There is no labelling confusion. It does not need a drive letter. It's just a folder.

And yes, there are thousands of files on that partition that are all included in that library - along with hundreds of jpegs - but none of them registers with a future date. It's only those pics, which actually now have increased to 16 with future dates, doubling the previous total of 8 - without any change on my end. It did it itself.

As far as the scanning goes, I have no way of knowing which were scanned and which were not, as many/most of the pics I received were from family members. But I'm not sure how that matters. I'm no scanning expert, but I can't see how a scanning error of some sort would render a future date, especially considering there are dozens of other pics from the same relative that do not have future dates. So I don't think that's a valid trajectory. But that's just me.

So thank you for your suggestions, but I think we're kind of grasping now and I don't want this to drag on. I'll just leave it as a strange anomaly for now. Thanks.

 

[RoWin7]

I have photos 40 years old, which scanned in with the correct dates, so I don't know why this happened. Sounds like "screwed-up metdata" is as good an explanation as any.
.
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@mitchell65--many folks on this forum also pre-date digital cameras. Many of us even predate PC's.

 

[LMiller7]

There are a variety of reasons why a file might have a future date. One possible cause being that the file was handled by a computer with the wrong date set, even if it was only for a short time. Considering that the issue may have occurred many months ago and not necessarily on the computer in question it would be very difficult to determine the cause.

But it shouldn't cause a problem for either Windows or software that uses the file. Most software doesn't even read the modified date and when it does it is usually only for display purposes. Reading the date is an extra step to obtain information most software doesn't care about. Windows explorer reads the date only for display purposes. The date may be important to people but the real date is in any event lost.

Intelligently designed software will not check the date, compare it with the current date, and conclude that something must be terribly wrong if it is in the future. When the CMOS battery in a computer fails the date as known to the computer will be reset to something usually years in the past and most file dates will be in the future. In some case it may be some time before the problem is noticed.