What if I *want* Windows Picture and Fax Viewer?

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Simple explanation? No. Personally I find Windows Picture and Fax Viewer more annoying and counter-intuitive than helpful. Hence one of the many things I do when I set up a new computer is to install and use a different program entirely. This article discusses that: http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_make_something_other_than_picture_and_fax_viewer_the_default_for_viewing_pictures.html

I had the same problem as a few previous posts on my Win 2K machine - reloading the shimgvw as suggested did not work.

While investigating, I found that my preview in explorer was not working for .jpg files but did work for .jpeg files.

After some more investigation, I found the answer on the following website:
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/index.html

It seems somewhere along the way my registry for the preview settings has got out of whack.

The website included a .reg file (previewfix.zip) that when run fixed up the registry for ShellExt and made my previews work again.

Hope this helps.

Update: Another approach to re-installing Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is to click on Start, Run... and type in:

regsvr32 /i shimgvw.dll
and press OK. Then press OK again on the resulting success message. (Thanks to comment poster Leon for this suggestion.)

IT WORKS!!

Hi Leo,

This info is super!
I need to ask you though, where you explain how to "force the association", in point 8, you give to paths to enter, how's that? am I to enter both paths? or only one? I didn't know we could enter 2 paths... I'm clearly confused.
Thanks in advance for enlighten me :)

J.

Correcting myself:

Wrong: "you give to paths to enter"

Good: "you give two paths to enter"

thanks

That's one long line

...rundll32.exe ...shimgvw.dll,Image... %1

I need to download windows picture and fax /xp for free

There is no download, it's part of Windows XP.

Windows picture and fax viewer no longer opens image files of any kind. The files open in paint but I want to use the windows program. How do I fix this?

I'm having the same problem Danieal. When I double click a picture file all I get is 'no preview available' in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Everything opens fine in photoshop, paint, explorer etc...

In the active title bar for the window, it either shows up blank, or says 00000 as the file name.

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