Windows Vista photo gallery errors

[dragonflyspit]

I used the photo gallery/album that comes with Vista on my HP dv7 laptop all the time. I have hundreds of thousands of photos and videos, so it's really handy to have everything right there, visible, and grouped by date.

It worked flawlessly until I went through a whole series of improper shut downs due to something completely unrelated. I think those shut-downs corrupted something.

The original photos and videos are all present and intact, but instead of thumbnails of my videos, they just appear as video icons in the gallery now so I can't tell what the video is of without playing it.

Also, many of the photos appear as only icons, and when I click to view them, I'm told the file can't be found. However, if I right-click, I can open the files in another program, so the files are okay, but the gallery/photo album feature of Vista isn't working right anymore.

Windows was pre-installed on the laptop, so I have no discs to fix the feature or reinstall it.

 

[carnageX]

Firstly, try clearing the thumbnail cache: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/73720-thumbnail-cache.html

Next, run a chkdsk on your HDD. Do this by doing the following:
Start -> type in cmd in the Start Search box -> right click Command Prompt -> Run as Admin -> type in the following command:

chkdsk c: /f /r

Press Enter. It will say it cannot lock the current drive and will ask to run on next reboot. Type Y and press Enter. Reboot your machine and let the disk check run through.

 

[dragonflyspit]

I'm traveling, so I'll have to wait until this evening when I have power to try that. Thank you. I'll let you know what happens.

 

[dragonflyspit]

Okay, I ran through both procedures, but the problem persists. I hope you have more suggestions.

Check disk only ran a few seconds before saying the disk was clean. Is that normal?

Let me know what next to do, and thanks again for your help.

 

[carnageX]

Try running the command again. Sometimes it says it's clean and doesn't actually run the check.

 

[dragonflyspit]

I ran check disk again. This time it ran for hours. I fell asleep so I didn't see whether it said it had found errors when it completed. It was on the Windows sign-in screen when I awoke. The photo gallery problem is still the same.

More ideas?

 

[dragonflyspit]

Is anyone still following this thread? Do you have any more suggestions?