Pictures In File Explorer Are Invisible Until Clicked On

This is weird. I have Windows 8. Quite awhile ago I had to use my backup software after almost losing everything on my hard drive (backups are on external drive). I use EaseTodo as my backup software. My pictures and videos came back with only the title. It is absolutely blank above each picture title. When I click twice the photo appear.
All of the pictures are jpgs and almost all downloaded from Google Images. I can open them with Windows Photo Viewer, XnView, Paint, Picasa, and PhotoScape. I have tried many times to use the top bar (I'm a computer genius - I have no idea what to call the bar) "Home" and "View" choices. Sometimes I get what I want that way but as soon as I close and open the file the pictures and videos are blank again.
Any suggestions that anyone has would be greatly appreciated. Dawn

 

Hi - Thanks for your help. I Googled this problem before I posted and your suggestions are some of the 1st that I found. Everything that is supposed to be checked is and everything that isn't supposed to be checked is unchecked. I ran through the whole thing again after reading your reply and I found that I had all of the settings that you suggested. I researched this problem like crazy and I'm really stuck.
I don't see a generic picture of anything. It's all still invisible.

I may not have made it clear - I can open these blank spaces with a lot of different programs when I right click and do "open with". It's frustrating because I have no idea what picture I'm opening since they are blank. I have tried to set every kind of photo software I have as a default, with no luck. None of the defaults work. ( I went to the default program choices in the Control Panel and tried every option available). Since there are no generic photos, and I've tried to set every kind of default I can, I'm still flying blind when I want to open a picture.

 

Right now I have it set on Windows Photo viewer. I just happened to leave it that way after I tried setting defaults. I can open it with any picture program. I've tried setting everything possible as a default program for .jpgs and jpegs and nothing will stop the invisibility problem.

 

Try this to see if it works:

Open a folder with images > go to the top bar and click on 'View' > then at the far right top click on 'Options' click on 'Change Folder & Search Options' > then in the window that appears click on 'View' > then in the Advanced settings that appear, the very first one put a check in the box 'Always show thumbnails never icons' then click 'apply' and 'ok' all the way out.

 

Maybe I'm backwards, but I couldn't find "Always show thumbnails never icons". I found "Always show icons, never thumbnails". I have tried turning that off and on since it's another simple thing that comes up in when searching Google. Am I missing something?

 

sorry that was me typing it wrong way round! lol It is as you said it should always show icons, then you can change the icons to normal, large or extra large.

 

Thank you but it doesn't help at all. Nothing shows up. No icons or thumbnails so there is nothing there to change into different sizes. Still just blank space.

 

OK. In case there is a system file issue, run sfc /scannow from an Administrator Command Prompt:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...l-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files

 

I'm so glad that you had me run the sfc program. It found two corrupt files and I fixed the problems. I've checked twice now and it looks like those issues are gone. However, those files didn't have any relationship to my invisible photo problem. I still have the same problem. I do feel better knowing that I fixed some corrupt issues that I wouldn't have known but for your suggestion.
So, if you have other ideas I'd be more than happy to have your advice.

 

It seems the icon cache is corrupt.
Here are detailed instructions how to delete and rebuild the icon cache in Windows 8, 8.1, 10.
http://www.winability.com/how-to-erase-icon-thumbnail-cache-windows-8/

 

Thank you for the advice. Before I posted here I did everything I could find on Google. I've already deleted and rebuilt the icon cache. I guess it wouldn't hurt to do it again. I'm pretty certain that I'll get the same result. I actually was at the page that you sent me to.

 

Hi there. Had almost the same problem. All my pictures in any folder was listed one by one as jpeg 1 then 2 and so on. So what worked for me was to click on any folder or picture and it would open. on the top bar look for the view button Click that and look for where it says Extra large icons. Large icons .Medium or small icons . Click the one that you like. Do that with each folder. Hope it works for you.

 

Thank You but I've gone to that top bar and tried everything. Sometimes I'd get good results but every time I closed the file and came back the pictures were blank again. I can't tell you how many times I was at that top bar trying everything. It looked like the perfect place to go to solve my problem but it just wouldn't keep the settings I would use.

 

Hi. By any chance do you have Tweaking.com downloaded. My pictures were fine before I tried Tweaking .com. A few days after I had installed the program, I tried to emailed a friend a picture. All my pictures were listed as jpeg 1-2-3. No thumbnails. Remembering what I had done before , I thought I would uninstall Tweaking. After doing what I had done in my other post, my pictures were back to where they were before Tweaking. Not Tweaking's fault. I should have checked to see what they were going to tweak. Well that's all I can say. Good luck

 

Hi Coffee Guy. It's funny that you mention Tweaking.com. It was very highly recommended by a cousin who's supposed to know this stuff. I ran it in safe mode two days ago. It found no problems at all with my computer. Nothing about my invisible photos or videos changed. Oh well. I do e-mail my cousin after I do anything to see if that has changed. It hasn't. Internet Explorer opens the pictures. Thanks so much for your help. It's a tough problem. After months of Googling I found no one with this problem. People just want to change thumbnails to icons and other stuff. No one is totally invisible. I've been living with this situation for awhile. Maybe I'll just have to accept it.
Thanks Again, Dawn.

 

FWIW Tweaking.com doesn't change anything - it resets a lot to the Windows defaults.
But back to your problem...
I noticed you have XnView installed. Make it the default program to open jpeg files. Does that change anything?

 

I have a number of programs that I have set as default programs. XnView, Windows Photo Viewer, Paint, Picasa and PhotoScape. I spent quite awhile on this and none of it worked. I can right-click and open the invisible pictures with some of these programs; but until I right click to open them I have no idea what they are. They open the files but until then I'm looking at nothing but picture descriptions under a blank white page.

 

You did run sfc /scannow from an Administrator Command Prompt. This makes me belive the only possibility left is malware.
I think you should visit the experts and do mention this thread.
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/index.php?forums/malware-help-mg-a-specialist-will-reply.35/

BTW In the shell32.dll file there are blank icons.
Have a look at this image - the file with your name has no icon!

 

The very 1st thing that I did was to check for malware. It seemed like that was a likely subject. I went through a bunch of instructions from another site. Nothing came up. Some of what I remember is running AdAware, I run MalwareBytes every other day. I have AVG rather than the Windows virus program. There were different steps that I was taken through and nothing showed up. If you can think of things I should try please let me know.
I don't know what the shell32.dll file is. I have no idea who JENITA and Working files are. I'm not sure where you are looking. I don't know where my file with no icon is. I've got my Cubs picture on my messages. I would appreciate it very much if you could give me more information. Thanks.

 

Sorry... I can understand your frustration.

The shell32.dll is a file where most of the Windows icons are stored.

JENITA and Working are just folders on my PC. Next to them is an invisible file with your name - it's a sample file I made to demonstrate it's possible to have 'invisible' icons with names.

Download this tiny utility - FileTypesMan.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/file_types_manager.html
Scroll down and select the correct one for your system.

Extract the archive and run FileTypesMan as Administrator.
Scroll down to .jpg. What do you see under Default Icon?

 

How do you get an invisible file with my name? Can we just work backwards? I don't know which is which as far as icons and thumbnails. .jpe and .jpg are on blue backgrounds with what look like little clouds. jpeg is a blue background with yellow hills. Sorry I can't name these things. After all of this you'd think I'd know the names.

 

It's a sample file I made in the hope of trying to help you.
Double-click the .jpg file in FileTypesMan, take a screenshot and post it.

 

Sorry. I forgot how to take a screenshot. I haven't done it in more than a year.

 

Press Prt Scrn, open XnView, click Edit > Import Clipboard and save it.

 

While you were answering I looked up a way to upload what you needed. I realized I should ask you an easy question that I could look up. Anyway, I did it a bit different than your instructions but I think that you can see it. I uploaded it. It may not be in XnView as I'm not sure what my default program is. Hopefully it's readable.

 

In Windows, not FileTypesMan, change the default viewer to Windows Photo Viewer.
Take another screenshot and post it.

 

Hopefully this is right. Sorry to waste your time.

 

The default viewer hasn't changed to Windows Photo Viewer - it's still Picasa.

 

Well that's very weird. I gave Windows Photo Viewer all of it's defaults. I went back to check and it has jpeg, jpg, etc. I deleted the 1st screenshots so that I wouldn't send you the wrong one. I'm sorry. I'll try again. I'm sorry to waste your time. I really appreciate your help.

 

I owe someone a hug. I don't have a complete fix but I have one that is very acceptable, considering how much trouble I've had. I rebooted (for something else) and I did my usual checking on my pictures. I can now use the top bar to open all of my pictures in one file at a time (Cubs, nature, etc.) I can use different sizes and I see all the pictures in the file. When I leave and close it up I come back to blank pictures, but being able to click a few things and see all of them when I go in is a huge help. I'm happy with this result. I have no idea what got me to this place. I've been going into sleep mode for days and haven't rebooted. I'm a happy camper. I don't need things to be perfect so I came to just thank everyone for their time and brain power.

 

DawnGoCubs...this likely won't change anything, but I am sort of suspicious that one of the picture viewer/editor programs may have become corrupted or maybe a cleaner software removed a required registry key for one of the programs (if you ever use a cleaner). Not trying to make you feel better, since you say it is OK now, but I wonder if it could be as simple as reinstalling the programs. Trouble with this is the best chance for a fix would be if you find the exact same version installer for each of the programs. Then it's only as likely to fully fix the problem as the other things you have tried.

Glad your system is better that it was, but wishing there was a ready made full fix!

P.S.-I saw this from another user here, who happened to have an 6 month old backup of the system registry that he made using Junkware Removal Tool. As a last ditch effort, he restored the registry using Junkware's feature, and his system was back to normal. He was very gutsy to try it, but it was either that or reinstall Windows for him.

 

Hi - I'm not sure how re-installing all of the different kinds of picture viewer/editor programs would help. I could see if there might be a problem with one or something like that but I use them all for other projects. Also, I stay far away from the registry. I know it's dangerous. But wouldn't that affect just one program if there was a problem with a registry key? I did get rid of XnView for awhile recently ( I forget why ) and downloaded it again a few weeks ago. Since I have no problem using any of the programs for other purposes I have trouble understanding your thinking.

I can't reinstall the stuff that came with Windows like the Photo Viewer and Paint. Now that I can open the pictures with any of those programs - granted I have to reset the top bar every time I go in - I'm not sure that I understand your point. It seems to me that it's something with that top bar not keeping permanent settings.

I've had CCleaner for many years. It's been great for me. It does catch registry remnants of uninstalled programs and the like. If I never go into the registry I don't know how I could mess up a key. CCleaner is careful about what it deletes. It's never anything resembling a key. I back up the registry every time I use CCleaner (every other day or so). I've had people tell me not to trust any registry cleaner but CCleaner hasn't let me down for all these years.
I really don't trust junkware programs. When you run the initial scan they tend to find all kinds of stuff. I'm really good at cleaning everything with CCleaner, msconfig, resmon, Process Explorer, etc. That is one area that I think I have a good understanding off. Many times the junkware programs find a lot of cookies, etc and I know how to search to see whether they are just B.S.ing. I'll check with CNET to look for a good junkware program but everything worthwhile costs $$$.

I appreciate your advice. Maybe you could give more detail on your post and how you came to your thinking about the causes of my problem. Yesterday a guy on another site told me he thought it was hardware. The motherboard on the computer had to be replaced after 15 months. HP got the problem wrong three times and replaced all of my hardware just 6 months ago. It's just a very bizarre problem. I think that I mentioned that I've been looking for someone with a similar problem and after months of Googling I found nothing. I'm Ok with what I have now but it would be nice to have a definitive answer.
Thanks again.

 

Could you check and see how far back your registry back ups go? I'll explain more later, but if you have one dating from before this issue began, you might be able to use that backup to fix the problem. It's tricky, but I can explain later. Restoring an old version of the registry would mean you might have to reinstall some programs that you added after the creation of the registry backup. It works, though. 100% if your backup predates the problem.

 

This issue goes back for many months. Every once in awhile I would go back to Google and see if I could find any new information. I would say it happened at least before October since I find old posts I've put in a few places back then. Even on those posts I mention how I've been dealing with the problem for some time. I could only take time to try and resolve this issue when I wasn't busy with my work. I don't save all of my registry backups because every time I use CCleaner I create a new back up. I use it at least twice a week. So even if I could figure out when this happened (I can't remember) those old registry backup have been deleted. I keep them for quite awhile but then the list gets long.
I don't know a lot about computers and when my cousin set everything up for me he told me that I didn't know enough to go in and mess with the registry. He was pretty strong on that point. He set CCleaner to clear away only the easy obvious registry issues so that nothing in the registry gets screwed up. I know what a registry key looks like and I've seen nothing like that. Mostly I see registry remnants from programs that I've deleted.
I guess my question is still my interest in why you think it's a corrupted photo program issue. I'm very curious about what you've seen that made you think that could be the problem.
Thanks for your help.

 

DawnGoCubs...

Not saying I think the problem is with broken registry keys/settings. However, you really have tried everything else but reinstalling programs and the looks at/fixes for the registry. That said, it is 100% appropriate for you to want to steer clear of the registry. Anyway, my first thought about the situation was that reinstalling one of the pic viewer programs might reset its registry keys and resolve your issue. I had not a thought of you going into the registry and/or changing anything there. One thing here to note, however. If you have an image backup of your system, it contains the registry. There isn't anything you can do to the registry at that point that will keep you from restoring the system backup if you have a restore disk. If you don't know, this is not the same thing as a registry backup, so please don't attempt to restore one of your CCleaner registry backups.

One thing is on my mind if you want to go further into this. It might help to know when the issue first began and if there are any memories you have of events around that time like programs you installed or such. If not, not sure where else you can go. Nothing lost, your PC is OK for you for now. For sure, reinstalling a program wouldn't hurt the system. Also, might (probably won't) fix the issue.

I can share much more about the registry if you would like to hear about it. It's a collection of settings, programs settings and Windows settings, all in a convenient form for Windows the program to read. It's not a horrible place, although your cousin is correct, it's not for new computer users. For 10 years, I wouldn't go near the registry...wouldn't even look at it. Now I cruise around in there when I would like to make a change. No way do I know my way around, but there is a large amount of information available on the internet. Not once have I had a problem after making a change with proper research (no issues at all over the last 10 or so years).

Just to try to take some of the mystery out of the registry for you (in case you were wondering), registry fixes are fairly regularly recommended here at MajorGeeks, and almost every MS help page offers a way to resolve an issue via the registry. You'll find these fixes being traded around at all the help sites around the internet. Respect the registry, yes. That's all. Don't even consider doing anything registry related until you are 100% sure you are ready. Mostly, none of what I typed in previous posts has been intended to be part of an attempt to get you to try something, I promise . I just wanted to see if you had considered attempting to reinstall all the viewer programs mostly. Just wanted to know.

End of it all, though, if you have registry corruption, there is a decent chance you will have to live with the problem or refresh/reinstall the OS. That is unless you get tired of the issue and are willing to try registry fixes as a last resort.

 

DawnGoCubs,
Do you have the Windows 8 DVD?

 

Here is the same issue on Windows 10. PC owner believes an update caused the problem. Updates for supported MS OSes are often for the same issue, so you could be experiencing a similar conflict if he is correct:

https://malwaretips.com/threads/icons-in-windows-have-no-image.66534/

 

I don't have the DVD and I am just fine with the way things are. AtlBo is talking about taking some big actions - like having to reload all the software I've downloaded since this problem started long ago. I don't even want to think about corrupt registries. I've gotten myself in trouble when trying to use a restore disk. I'm just not that intelligent about taking what seem to be kind of drastic actions; especially since all I have to do now is use a couple of extra clicks to resolve my problem. It seems obvious that the choices in the bar above the pictures which has "Home", "View" etc. just won't keep the settings after I get out of the file. When I go back in I set them again. That happens with every photo software I've tried. If that's from some registry corruption I won't worry about it if, or until, anything gets worse.

I can't see how any of my photo software can be corrupted since everything I use those programs for works just fine. I think that then takes us back to corrupt registry entries or keys. I have seen many articles about working on registry keys. I've even done some simple ones (very carefully).
Again, I can't uninstall things like Windows Photo Viewer, Paint, and who knows what else.

When I see anything about refreshing or reinstalling an OS I want to run away. I crashed a previous computer when trying to do that without having the OS disk but with having the restore and repair disks. It's too much for me, although I know for many people it just another easy thing to do.

What's funny is that everyone has completely different ideas about things I can do. I guess that's the nature of computer problems. I have no idea what actually worked to help my problem become a minor one. I'm on another board, which I've signed out of because I feel that I've found a good fix that I'm happy to live with. I'm also still under warranty so if things go south I'll take it in.

I appreciate all of the time and brain power that everyone has put into this. I have to say that when I've tried to post to a board before everyone tends to jump ship relatively quickly. That's their choice, of course. Here I have gotten more help and attention than I could have ever expected. The way I feel is just that I'm a pretty casual user and I don't know a lot about this stuff. I guess I'm reluctant to do many things because I did crash a computer and I don't know what I did wrong. It was restore or repair or something after I saw the BSOD. I couldn't get help because I couldn't get online. I plowed ahead when I should have gotten onto someone else's computer to get help. So maybe that helps you to understand what I know (and the bunches of stuff I don't). If I have any other problems I know that this is the site to come to.

 

Worry not DGC . Computers are more resiliant than you realize. Live with it the way it is and maybe some day you will run across something that fixes the problem or maybe it will even fix itself. At the end of a thread if the issue isn't resolved, sometimes I will pick at an idea to make sure the user is sure they can live with the situation. So I was just picking you for information and really had no advice honestly, although I feel sure it could be resolved with probably about 8 hours of picking around...

By the way. If you can make sure to get yourself a good backup plan if you don't have one yet. You will need a backup disk and an imaging program. Burn the rescue disk and create an image. Then backup your files to make sure you have them for the time when your hard drive will inevitably "retire". This will give you amazing peace of mind.

Good luck.

 

Thanks. If there's anything I learned from my experience it was to back up everything and create every disk possible. I bought a third party program that was rated highly by CNET, PCMag and some other places. I wasn't hearing great stuff about the Windows back up program. Everything gets backed up automatically once a week to an external disk. I have made every disk possible. The program has that feature (backup disk, imaging program, etc). I also burnt those disks from Win 8. That's great advice for someone at my skill level. Thank you for everything.