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

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Summary: Many people prefer alternatives to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Others prefer it. Here's how to reset it to be the default image viewer.

A very common question most folks have shortly after installing Windows XP is How do I make something other than "Picture and FAX Viewer" the default for viewing pictures?.

The other day I got a couple of variations on the reverse:

What is the file name and extension for Windows picture and fax viewer? I want to use it for an OLE object to view pictures.

and

How do I change my default image viewer back to the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer?

Turns out it's easier to get rid of than it is to restore. But not impossible.

•

It took a little spelunking using Process Explorer to determine the command line that is used when Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is invoked. Turns out that it's not a stand-alone exe at all.

The command to run Windows Picture and Fax viewer is:

rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\System32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen path-to-picture

So, to answer the first question: shimgvw.dll probably exposes the objects needed to use Windows Picture and Fax Viewer as an OLE object.

As for the second, restoring Windows Picture and Fax Viewer as the viewer for images:

Note what file extension you want to change the default for. That's the ".jpg", ".gif", and so on at the end of the filename. It indicates the type of picture, and more importantly, it's what Windows uses to decide what program to use to display it.
Open up Windows Explorer. (The Windows Key + E, on many keyboards.)
Find any file with that same extension.
Right-click on the filename, and select Open With ....
Select Choose Program at the bottom of the list that's displayed.
In the resulting dialog box, "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" should already be listed. Click on it.
Check the box labeled "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file".
Press OK

If for some reason it's not already in the list, you can force the association by following these steps, still in Windows Explorer:

On the Tools menu, click Folder Options...
Click on the File Types tab.
Scroll down to the extension you care about, for example "JPG".
Press the Restore button, if it exists.
Press the Advanced button.
Click on the Open action.
Click on Edit...
In the Application used to perform action: enter C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\System32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen %1. Where "C:\WINDOWS" is the directory containing your Windows installation.
Press OK

You'll want to repeat that for every extension (GIF, JPG, JPEG, etc.) for which you want to change the behavior.

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.)

Related:

How do I make something other than "Picture and FAX Viewer" the default for viewing pictures? Windows Picture and FAX Viewer is the default application for viewing images under Windows. But there are many other programs out there as well.

Article C2336 - April 20, 2005

Recent Comments

79 Comments

I liked the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in XP, but now I've switched over to Vista Ultimate. The photo gallery program is not nearly as friendly. Is there a way to download in run the older Windows Picture and Fax Viewer program on Vista?

Posted by: Jeff at January 11, 2008 12:12 PM

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That's this article:
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_get_windows_picture_and_fax_viewer_in_windows_vista.html

Leo

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Posted by: Leo A. Notenboom at January 13, 2008 11:25 AM

1.click start-control panel.
2.click folder options.
3.in folder options-click file types click NEW.
4.in create new extention enter [TIF] infile extention box. then click ADVANCED.
5.in associated File Type drop down find TIF Image.
6.click OK.
7.find TIF Image in the list.
8.click OK
END
the above worked for me, and still doe's.
All the best Brian
7 Mar 2008

Posted by: Brian at March 7, 2008 11:47 AM

When using the second method to restore the default viewer, you must add the quotations when typing in the program path or you get an error saying.....

"The specified program could not be found. Make sure the path and file name are correct."

In the Application used to perform action: enter
"C:\WINDOWS system32\rundll32.exe" "C:\WINDOWS\System32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen" "%1"

Posted by: Wikkid at May 10, 2008 8:59 PM

Download the mozilla add on that will launch an internet explorer tab in a mozilla session...then open the link with picture and fax viewer.

Posted by: Clarice at July 9, 2008 9:29 AM

Thanks for the info. You solved my version of the problem. My preferred default was MS Office Document imaging that I use to incorporate scanned images into powerpoint. My default with XP was reset by the widely reviled office 2007 upgrade. I was using right click open/with but was just double clicking to get my preference.
Not only was this an extra couple of steps, but I often forgot and double-clicked and got the wrong progam. MS Office Document Imaging allows you to select a portion of the image and edit/"copy image" to paste into a powerpoint slide. This is very useful in adapting powerpoint to replicate the blackboard / transparency / notes techniques for college classes (I'm an adjunct prof).

Posted by: Ralph at July 13, 2008 5:21 AM

Importing this registry key will set picture and fax viewer as default for TIF and TIFF files.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.TIF]
@="TIFImage.Document"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.TIFF]
@="TIFImage.Document"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document]
"EditFlags"=dword:00010000
"FriendlyTypeName"=hex(2):40,00,25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,\
00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,\
32,00,5c,00,73,00,68,00,69,00,6d,00,67,00,76,00,77,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,\
00,2c,00,2d,00,33,00,30,00,36,00,00,00
"ImageOptionFlags"=dword:00000000
"BrowserFlags"=dword:00000008
@="TIF Image"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\DefaultIcon]
@="shimgvw.dll,4"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\shell]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\shell\open]
"MuiVerb"="@shimgvw.dll,-550"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\shell\open\command]
@="rundll32.exe C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen %1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\shell\open\DropTarget]
"Clsid"="{E84FDA7C-1D6A-45F6-B725-CB260C236066}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\shell\printto]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TIFImage.Document\shell\printto\command]
@="rundll32.exe C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_PrintTo /pt \"%1\" \"%2\" \"%3\" \"%4\""

Posted by: eric liu at August 25, 2008 12:17 PM

Is there any way of getting Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to run on Vista?

Not that I'm aware of, and it's a common request. My recommendation is to switch to something like FastStone Image Viewer.
-Leo

Posted by: Tobie Nortje at September 9, 2008 1:51 AM

Hi, Leo - My problem is different (but I feel related to this thread). Now, when I scan text, when I am getting an uneditable (apparently unconvertible)"photo" image. I want text that I can covert to Word with OCR. That is what happened in the past. I must have done something to change my settings. My operating system is XP and I have Word from Office 2003. Thank you for this help, Alan

Scanning to OCR is usually a two-step process: scan to an image and then run OCR software on that image. Unfortunately since I don't know how you were set up to do this in the first place when it worked for you, I don't know how to restore that functionality.

- Leo
08-Oct-2008

Posted by: Alan Ruvelson at October 7, 2008 9:43 AM

Closing comments here, since we have oodles, and they're mostly thank you's, or people that haven't read the article.

- Leo
03-Nov-2008

Posted by: Leo at November 3, 2008 11:03 AM

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