images wont show

[jimbo]

hi all. wonder if anyone has come across this and knows the answer.

 

 a friend of mine has some holiday photos which he downloaded via a card slot in his printer on to his computer. it's a 3month old machine running windows 7 home. cant remember the specifics but has a good speed chip and plenty of ram with loads of HDD space. i dont know what he did but whatever it was it has stopped his photos from being viewable now. all he gets is a small white square with a red cross in it.

i tried changing the program used to open the pics, changing the file extension name but no good. cant resize them either.

 

if anyone has a solution i can try for him, i would be much obliged

 

many TIA

[BamSec1]

Hi jimbo,

The only thing I can come up with is that your friend should check the filenames of the photos.
Some English programs won't open files which have strange characters in their names, like:
é, à, ä, â, è, î, ş, ğ, ĕ, ë, ô, ü -or signs like- ✫ ✬ ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ ✛ ✚ ☺ ▲ and others.

I had this once with an older version of SF ScreenView.

If the pics are still on his mem-card, try to open them on another PC, maybe they are corrupted.

Last thing, you could send me one for me to check the file's body structure.

Cheers,
BamSec1

[s33m33]

-Download a good anti-malware and check his system first.

 

-Do a system restore to the point before this happened.

 

-Check and repair corrupt system files using the command sfc /scanow.

Make sure you have Win7 setup disc ready. It is required by this command.

[jimbo]

hi guys. many tnx for the replies.

 

unfortunately, he deleted the pics from his card when putting them on to the puter, so now has lost them if no solution is found. i did a full A/V scan and full anti-spyware scans with superanti-spyware and Manware bytes. nothing showed with any of them. i have tried changing both what the pics open with and the file extention, again no good. i tried copying them to a separate drive, still the same.

 

i am pretty sure this is an easily resolved issue when the fix is applied. problem is, i cant remember the fix, lol. the info i have found on the net seems to refer only to either web images or attachments to e-mails in Outlook. the solutions are pretty old too.

 

i'll try to get one of the pics next time i see him. if i can open it on my machine, it'll save taking more of your time, BamSec1. the offer is greatly appreciated though

 

i'll also try your file fix, s33m33, so tnx for that suggestion as well

 

if i manage to sort it out, i'll post back. as a last resort i could reimage the puter. i dont think there is much on it of importance.

 

appreciated, guys

[BamSec1]

unfortunately, he deleted the pics from his card.

If nothing was copied over the pics, you could use an undelete program to restore them (to another place than the sd-card!).

But possibly they are corrupted, then nothing will help anymore.

[jimbo]

which undelete program do you suggest mate? i have read some work, some dont. would obviously like to give him the best chance of getting them back

[BamSec1]

>> Portable Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro v11.1.0.0 <<

[jimbo]

much obliged BamSec1. if the card hasn't been reused since, i'll give it a try

[draww]

are the files in jpeg2000 format? what's the extension or can you read any exif metadata?

[jimbo]

hey draww. tnx for reply.

 

the photos are in PNG format. i did try to open and resave one as jpeg, but that didn't work, although a separate photo i copied across was fine. one thing that was suggested by another friend of mine was that he had basically copied/saved the shortcuts to the photos in stead of the photos themselves. i haven't had time to go to see him today to try putting the card back in and trying it, but he did tell me originally that he was able to open and view the photos on the computer when he had transfered them. on top of that, he reckons he's used the card since and got more photos on it.

yesterday i tried putting an image i created on the day he got the machine (couple of months ago) after i had put the a/v and malware finders on it etc. i could then open the M/S sample pics which were also not opening before but still couldn't open the photos. that has made suspicious as to what he did, what he could do and why he cant now. the aim was to burn the photos to disk as a permanent record. looks like that's all gone down the crapper!

[draww]

if you were dealing with shortcuts you'd know it because of the file sizes. png extension is strange actually. they should've been in jpg/jpeg format.

so there is something weird but I can't tell its name without seeing the original files, which -in this case- is impossible now.

[s33m33]

Also, you tried changing file extension as mentioned in first post. So a shortcut is out of the question as it would have been evident from the start.

Agree with Draww.. Need to check the files to make any sort of guess.

[jimbo]

appreciate the suggestions guys but so far nothing has managed to sort out this problem.

 

just as a little bit more info, each of the .png files is around 2.5meg, give or take a bit. i just cant figure out what he's done or how to open the damn files. if i could get them to open, i could then resave as jpeg or some other format.

[s33m33]

Try downloading an image converter on the forum. These converters have inbuilt codecs alongwith dependencies and may get the job done.

[jimbo]

worth a try, s33m33. is there one in particular you would suggest?

[s33m33]

Nothing specific .. ACDSee, XNview, Total Image Converter are some you could try.

[jimbo]

just an update guys.

i spent a couple of hours playing today and got nowhere! as a last resort, i put the original HDD backup on the computer but the images still wouldn't open! they must have somehow been corrupted so i then imaged the HDD back again to the newer time and tried the recovery programs. again, no luck so far. i have left the machine with EaseUS recovery program running to see if that has any luck (gonna take 2hours). will go back tomorrow and see but it certainly looks as if the photos have gone. real shame, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

i'll post as to the success or fail tomorrow, but want to thank you guys for doing your best to help.

 

TIA

[draww]

can you upload one (if not very personal and of course with permission)? you can PM it to s33m33 and/or me only so it'll remain kind of secret

 

in case you'll send one don't use image hosters like imgur, tinypic, etc. just upload it to some file hoster

 

Hidden Content

Give reaction to this post to see the hidden content.

 is a good alternative for this job. all links will be deleted after 24 hours, uploads can also be password protected.

[jimbo]

appreciate the offer, people. i dont think it will be a problem to do that. i'm going round again this morning to see the results of a data recovery, if any. i tried yesterday 3 different ones, but they din't work. i then found the EaseUS one so thought i'd give it a try but was gonna take 2 hours, so left it running and came home.

if i remember, i'll try to get a screen dump as well of the file trying to be opened in Photo Viewer or Photo Gallery, which i think is the default. friend did phone me last night to say the program had finished and it had found however many files, far more than the number of photos, so it may well have done some good. will check back later after the missus has finished with me taking her shopping! lol

 

L8ers

[s33m33]

Thanks for uploading the file jimbo. Thought it would be PNG file as you mentioned, instead it's a JPG.

 

Anyway, checked file in a hex editor and it has null(zero) content. It seems the image is corrupted and cannot be retrieved.

 

Hope you have better luck with EaseUS.

[jimbo]

sorry s33m33, i forgot to say i had changed the extension while trying to get the things to show. they were originally when i saw them .png files. it made no difference, however, still unable to do anything with them.

 

are the uploads of any use to you in suggesting a solution?

[s33m33]

Renaming extension wasn't a problem.

 

Like I mentioned, the image file has no data inside. Nothing you can do to get it working.

 

EaseUS is the only alternative right now.

[jimbo]

EaseUS achieved precisely nothing as well! after running for 2 hours and telling us it had found 600+ files (not just the photos), when trying to recover just one of the photos, it gave the image shown in the screen dumps of Photo Viewer and Faststone. the thing that is confusing me even more now, from your comment s33m33, is how can the files can have approx 2.5mg of nothing each?

[draww]

like s33m33 said before this is what you see in a hex editor

 

 

it means no file type header, no data.. I think it has been overwritten with a security software (probably someone used zero bytes method for a quick secure wipe)

 

and it's more likely that the SD card is also overwritten that's why you can't save anything with recovery. The zero byte method fills all addressable data with 00 and it'll stop most recovery software.

 

There might be a chance to recover them with hardware recovery tools/gadgets. But it's really expensive right now.

 

 

typical PNG header

 

typical JPEG header

[jimbo]

hi guys. tnx for the further help.

 

i see what you mean about the files having been written over and what it has left. i didn't even know about checking the images with a hex editor, draww. that has given me some info i didn't have and would never have thought of. that poses the question of why the hell did the cleaning software, ccleaner, do that? it's what i and just about everyone uses after an internet session and have not heard of any similar issues. (i guess you, s33m33 and all here are the same?). that seems really strange to me. however, it looks like he's gonna have to deal with the anger of his missus and chalk this one up to experience.

the one important thing i have now got him to do is to make sure he copies all off the card, not cut, and then makes a copy of what comes off the card on the separate partition. that gives him two lots of the same images to screw up before wiping the card.

 

whilst writing this post, i remembered something he told me and it could explain what happened. he told me that after transferring the images from the card on to the computer, he was given a choice of deleting the images and formatting the card. i just wonder if the deleting and then formatting did the computer as well as the card? when i tried the card, there was nothing on it except the new images. nothing of the old images left. i played safe with those and copied them on to the computer for him, as described above. anyway, was a thought.

 

many tnx for all the suggestions and help given guys, was very much appreciated

 

jimbo