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

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...SOLUTION...
first off, sorry I spelled your name wrong.

Do this... Start --> Run, Paste this in..

regsvr32 /i shimgvw.dll

Click Okay, then okay again, it should work.

I didn't have time to read all 192 comments, but I thought some of those who posted ones I did read would be helped by this page: http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119993,00.asp
["...choose New,Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut wizard, type rundll32.exe %SystemRoot%\system32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen (don't forget to include the space after "rundll32.exe"..."]

My scanner program can link to a program, but you need to show it a *.exe. I'd like to use Windows Picture and fax viewer, what should I do?

Eric, try pointing it to explorer.exe (or c:\windows\explorer.exe). If the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is the default for the image type that your scanner is using, it should work.

Most of this article didn't apply to my situation however I noticed one person's comment that did match: How to restore the Preview (not Open) association to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (for me, Photoshop's Image Ready hijacked this menu item).

In Folder Options - File Types, go to the extension (in my case PNG), the button near the bottom-right probably says "Restore" instead of "Advanced". Click on Restore. It will change to Advance. Then click on Advance. I was able to remove Image Ready references. I restored Preview by changing the program used to...

C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\System32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen %1

...and change the accelerator key back to "v" by typeing "pre&view" for the name of the action.

Then fix the default program used to open the file (it got changed when first clicking on the Restore button) back to the default (in my case Corel PhotoPaint).

I hope this helps. Trying to explain procedure in the shortest space possible.

No response necessary. Thanks very much.

I just wanted to let you know how your work has benefited some kids. It let me help out some sixth and eighth graders at a school in South Carolina who are taking my Pearls of Perl course and wanted to know how to get their Perl program to display pictures.

(I couldn't find a simple Perl module that they could install to display pictures.)

I had searched through Microsoft Help for some time and tried guessing the process name from the task manager display as well as looking through the Windows directory for the name of an exe.

I know now that it would have taken me a long time going that route.

--D.

Hi, I was trying to do the same thing as several other people in this forum, add Windows picture and fax viewer to other OLE type objects as a default action after customising my right-click menus.

One thing I'd like to add is that if you encase the %1 in double quotes ("%1") then for some reason it fails to work. This is a usual habit of mine, since putting " " around %1 is usually good practice to handle spaces in filenames. However here it seems to break it. Not having the " " doesn’t seem to be a problem... it handles spaces just fine without it.

Thanks Leo for this forum, it helped me realise what I was doing wrong with the syntax. I knew I was on the right track because it had worked for other people.

Could not get WP&F viewer to default when opening .jpg or .jpeg from Juno email attachment.
Start, Run... and type in: regsvr32 /i shimgvw.dll
Did the trick.
Thanks Much - Jed

FABULOUS! A newbie to XP, some program or another hijacked all my graphics file associations early on in my computer setup. Here's what I did - on the "Advanced" tab for the file associations, I created a new "command" (preview), pasted in the above to the Application line, then set "preview" to default. Now, when I double click a graphics file it shows it to me with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, but I can still right click and have it open with the graphics program of my choice.

Best of all, I changed the BMP extension first, and I think maybe the GIF extension, only to find with great pleasure that all the JPEG and TIFF extension variants automatically changed as well, with the "open" still set to whatever program that hijacked them (fine, as I'm still debating what to use for a graphics editor, and will fix when I've decided) but with my new "preview" command firmly in place using Windows Viewer and set as the default. I was so stunned I almost fell off my chair, this accommodating behaviour is most unlike Windows...

I think I'd better buy Leo a Latte!!!

Thanks!

Hi Leo

This one has got me stumped. I’ve been right through this article and my Windows Picture & Fax Viewer still isn’t working. I can view images in other apps.

1) Viewing images as thumbnails or filmstrip displays nothing
2) Opening files in Windows Picture & Fax Viewer brings up error box:
> RUNDLL: Error loading C:\WINDOWS\System32\shimgvw.dll. The system cannot find the file specified

I’ve tried re-associating by all 3 of the methods listed in this article (via “Always open with”, via Folder Options & using Command Prompt) but no change.

I’ve tried replacing shimgvw.dll with a new downloaded copy (twice) then re-registering it with [run: regsvr32 /i shimgvw.dll], but I get error box:
> RegSvr32: LoadLibrary(“shimgvw.dll”) failed – The system cannot find the file specified.

I’ve run a registry fix from eusing.com, which claimed to fix 1500 or so bad registry keys (failed associations etc), but didn’t fix this.

I’ve run System File Checker [run: sfc /scannow] as suggested in the article but it didn’t find anything.

Final note, from around the same time my WP&FV failed, I’ve also had “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000034)…” errors when trying to open some other applications. So far I’ve seen it on Windows Media Player, My Pictures Screensaver, and my broadband provider’s in-house protection package NTL Netguard.

I’m hoping it’s not a Trojan, but I can’t see any suspicious processes running.

Help…!

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