Solution to problem - Windows Explorer crash in Windows XP

The following simple solution has worked for
lots of folks:

Do you happen to have Adobe PhotoShop or
Elements installed?

If you do...right click on a .jpg file and choose
Properties. Click the Photoshop Image tab
and uncheck the "Generate Thumbnails" button,
then click OK.

--

John Inzer
Picture It! MVP
return e-mail disabled


"Christen Møller" <cleese@get2net.dk> wrote in message
news:037b01c36c7d$a9ae2560$a001280a@phx.gbl...
Solution to problem - Windows Explorer crash in Windows XP

On my PC with XP Pro edition my explorer allways crashed
when trying to handle picture files of types '.TIF'
or '.JPG' located in folders with more than a few
pictures: when browsing the folder, when trying to open a
picture in 'AdobePhotoshop' or 'PainShopPro', and when
trying to save a picture in 'AdobePhotoshop'
or 'PainShopPro.

The message in an 'Explorer.exe'-window reads: 'The
instruction at "0x..." referenced memory at "0x...". The
Memory could not be "written"'.

This would suggest a memory problem. Memory tests however
did not find any faulty RAM. Searching the Internet and
Newsgroups revealed, that other people have faced this
problem, but I found no solutions!

Very annoying! A workaround by using the built in
browsers of 'AdobePhotoshop' or 'PainShopPro' is
troublesome and does not allow for batching processes
etc.!

However, recently I bought a laptop with XP Home edition.
Connected to my PC my laptop browses and opens my
pictures with no problem! After comparing the file type
associations and desriptions on the two computers I did
some experiments, which lead to this solution:

1) You must associate the file types to 'Windows Picture
and Fax Viewer' instead of 'AdobePhotoshop', but that is
not enough.

2) You also must edit windows registry and change the
description of the files (by right clicking 'Standard' to
edit the type):

File type '.TIF' (and type '.TIFF') must be changed
from 'Photoshop.TIFFFile' to 'MSPaper.Document'

File type '.JPG' (and types 'JPE' as well as '.JPEG')
must be changed from 'Photoshop.JPEGFile' to 'Jpegfile'

Now I did try to revert the file type associations:
browsing the '.TIF' files did not make the Explorer
crash, but double clicking one to open it
in 'AdobePhotoshop' did! Obviously there is still a
problem with Windows XP, that should be dealt with. It
ought to handle these file type associations correctly,
wouldn't you say so?

However, I hope this will solve the problems for other
people dealing with pictures!

Regards, Christen Møller.