Hi all,
We scanned in about a thousand old photos on our old computer (Dell Dimension 4100, Windows ME) with Photoshop 7. Now we've got a new computer (Dell Precision 360, Windows XP Pro) and we transferred those folders of the scanned-in photos. However, when we try to open some of the folders, Explorer crashes. The same thing happens when we try to open those files inside Photoshop. It doesn't seem happen with all the pictures, and it doesn't always happen with the same pictures.

I checked the Event Viewer and this is what I found:
Event ID: 1000
Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2800.1106, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.1217, fault address 0x000085c0.

Any ideas what to do? I tried to open those files on our laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200, Windows XP Home) and I had no problems.

Thanks in advance,
Sue

Make sure you have done all the Windows Updates on your new computer.

Problems with XP:

1. It phones home; to Redmond that is.

2. Make sure Automatic Update is turned off: XP loves to update any time it pleases, especially if you are in the middle of some memory hogging job; then, XP wants to install the update with no notice whatsoever.

3. Set your Page File (Virtual Memory) to the maximum allowable. What is the maximum? That depends upon your disk size and how much memory you have. XP will not allow you to go over the maximum, so set it really high like 50Megs or so, and it will report back what the maximum is when you click Apply.

4. Since before Windows 95 all Windows Platforms are junk! They keep offering patches, but each subsequent platform (IE. W-98, W-2000, W-ME, ...et nauseum)is nothing more than the last version with a new condom over the old patches. (Remember Windows 98 crashing live on MS-NBC when Billy unveiled it? Beware of Karma rich man!)

Don't worry, your not the only oner with freak problems. Rhino only crashes on me and a handful of other users of W-XP, and we all have Dell's. Yep, I got hozed by Dell too! I think they paid someone off for their award winnings from JD Powers!

I'm still waiting for software vendors to make the big switch to Linux so we can end all these problems with SPAM and Virus's. NO platform is secure when it is allowed to phone home to it's vendor with you IP address and under the End User Agreement, Redmond can disable any piece of software they choose! That is those that didn't pay Billy his extortion fee!

Thank you both for the tips, I'll check into these. I did update WinXP recently. As for Dell, my husband talked to tech support before I posted my message and he was basically told that they (Dell) are not going to help since it's an issue of transferring files between two computers. Nice, huh? :(

If it's different files each time I'd suspect it's a problem with buffer under-runs (I'm assuming you are using CD for the transfers?). Go into the BIOS (usually a key press, such as Del, while the computer is booting) and try setting the CD/DVD drive to a PIO mode (higher numbers are faster, so try 3 first) rather than DMA: Windows XP seems much more sensitive to this sort of thing than 98 in my experience, and caused all sorts of installation problems until I tracked it down. Hopefully you have a system manual that will tell you exactly where to find the options, or better go to Dell and demand this information. Cyptojoe: right-click on My Computer, go to the system updates tab and choose the degree of automation you want. For my work there has been a general increase in stability from Windows 3.1 through 95 and 98 to XP.

Yes, we transferred the files using CDs. I spent hours yesterday trying to find some answers at the Microsoft and Dell sites, and finally I tracked down the info on how to change things in the BIOS (trying to repair Windows XP). But before doing that, we did some more experimenting and this is what we found: 1. When setting up the computer we had set up our own accounts in Windows XP and he was doing all this file transfer and folder opening stuff in his account. 2. He had made a "genealogy" folder on his desktop and if he put these files (which were organized into several folders) into this genealogy folder, and then he went into those folders to open them, he had the crashing problem. 3. If he put the picture folders on the desktop, but not in the genealogy folder, he didn't have the problem. 4. We logged onto my account, made a genealogy folder on my desktop, and put these picture folders in there to see what would happen. 5. We could go into this genealogy folder and open the folders without any crashing. So right now it seems that maybe there's something wrong with his account and everything works fine in mine. So I think we'll just put those pictures in that folder in my account (and maybe we'll delete his account and set up a new one for him). Thank you very much for all the help and suggestions! I hope that now everything will work fine. :) Thanks again, Sue

Well, now it seems that putting them in my account didn't really help after all. Right now it looks like the problem might be with the naming of some of the pictures (length of file name, characters used). Though some pictures seem to get away with longer file names and special characters while others seem to crash Explorer. So I have to rename the guilty ones before putting them in the new folder. We had a similar problem when we made contact sheets in Photoshop on the old computer. Some file names crashed Photoshop when opening the contact sheets...

Hmmm.... ...strange.

Does the file Size seem to effect anything?

It doesn't seem to. They are not very big (some of them as small as 20 Kb, some around 200 Kb) and the sizes of the pictures that seem to cause crashes are random. It IS very strange...

Attached Link: External HD,$60,80GB

Hey susan this is a 'after thought' but get ur self a extra hard drive,an external one they are really cheap now when you scan ur stuff just run it on this external HD drive and that way you dont have to worry about all this ---------------------------------------------------------- Iomega 32393 80 GB External - USB 2.0 - 7200 Rpm - 9 ms

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an after thought but hey.......i wasnt there when you statted buying all those CDs....lol ;-)

Attached Link: Whoops..that link wont work on that other post

:-o do a google/bizrate search and you'll find some cheapos...lol

Thanks Bill, I'll check it out. :)

I don't want to jinx ourselves, but right now it seems that we have finally had success. We tried transferring the photos on Zip disks instead of CDs and so far it seems that everything goes well, no crashes. (Knock on wood!!)
So either it was what RHaseltine mentioned (thanks, Richard!) or maybe there was something wrong with the CDs. Though we didn't have problem with them on the laptop... We haven't done the change in the BIOS yet because hubby is concerned about the warranty with Dell. I don't know if he's right or it wouldn't matter if we changed things in there as far as the warranty is concerned?

But anyway, right now it seems that the Zip disk tranfer works much better. Thank you everybody for all the help! :)

Sigh... Looks like I spoke too early again. My husband tried to organize the folders by making subfolders and moving the files, and after this he had the same crashing problem. The strange thing is that this doesn't seem to happen with my files and folders. I wonder if there's something wrong with his .jpg files?

You might try selecting all the files, right clicking to get properties, and unclicking the read only attribute. I don't know why that would cause problems, but who knows. But when you transfer files from a CD like that, they all end up with read only attributes, which means you can modify or change them. That may hang XP up for all I know

try going into the folder options and checking to have all folders not cache the thumbnails or if its already checked then have it cache them..... i dunno...lol also MS makes a tweakUI for free and you might want to get it and go thru the options and see if it helps,there a lot of stuff you dont need running anyways to prevent system resource waste

yeah and dont mess with the bios.......my gosh its brand new for gosh sakes....lol

I checked the properties and the read-only attribute was unselected. However, this gave me an idea to poke around more in there and I noticed a "Photoshop Image" tab. I went there and unclicked the "Generate Thumbnails" option. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, I know I checked the properties earlier... But anyway, this seems to have helped because now I can move the folders around and open them with no crashing.

Thank you everybody for all the tips, they really helped!

Bill, thanks for the tweakUI idea, I'll check it out.