[please_just_work]

Hi,

I really hope someone can help me with this because i've spent hours searching on the internet and money speaking to 'The Tech Guys' (UK software support) and nobody seems to have an answer. Incidentally this problem is remarkably similar to some other posts on this site but they all concern problems transferring image files from Vista to XP; this is the other way around.

I have within the last month bought an HP Pavilion desktop PC with Vista Home Premium, 2 gig RAM, 320 HD. Before that I had an Advent desktop with XP SP2. I do a lot of video editing and so have a lot of AVI, JPG and audio files as well as Premiere Pro edits. The XP OS crashed in my old PC and I had to get PC World to transfer all these files (plus many other word, excel etc docs) from the HD onto a Western Digital 320 gig external USB2 HD.

When connecting the WD HD into my new Vista machine, all the image, movie, audio and doc files open and play perfectly - every file has been succesfully rescued from the old disk. However, when I transfer these files onto the internal drive of my new PC there are random and completely frustrating problems. For example when I transfer 50 JPGs of a wedding taken with different cameras, some show up as thumbnails but some do not. When you try to open them in Windows Photo Gallery some will open OK but the others come up with a message saying "Photo Gallery can't open this picture or video. The file format is not supported, or you don't have the latest updates to Photo Gallery". What's strange is that its not just the picture files with no thumbnail that don't open - some of the pictures clearly show the thumbnail but will not open.

I have tried everything I can think of to narrow down the source of this problem but can't get any consistency. If I delete the image files I have transferred and re-copy them from the external drive, the same thing happens but with a different random selection of image files. It happens to different image files from different folders, taken with different cameras and there is no consistency. I have been through EVERY picture on the external HD and they all open as normal when opened from the external drive.

For the record, a similar thing is happening with the video AVI's and audio files I am transferring. A couple of AVI's might open but the rest just crash Windows Media Player. When I open them direct from the external drive - no problems.

Sorry for a huge ramble but I wanted to give you as much info as poss. I apologise if this has been answered and I have missed the thread but I have spent many hours trying to find the answer to this problem already. I need to use some of these media files for business and am getting pretty desperate. Any help much appreciated.

Dan

[please_just_work]

I'm replying to my own message because despite over 80 views, nobody has any pearls of wisdom! Since my original post I have managed to connect the old corrupted XP drive to my new PC and override security in order to copy and paste photo folders.

Exactly the same problem occurs - all photo/music/video files play fine directly from the old drive but most (completely random) files will not open when transferred to the main new C drive.

I feel I have exhausted every 'test' and that the culprit has to be Vista but so far no answers from forums, premium phone support, pc world etc. Wierd and increasingly frustrating as I need these files installed for business purposes.

Thanks,

D

[DaveA]

I have transferred many a GIG of files from my External USB drives to my Vista machines and have NOT had any problems in reading, editing any file. True I have NOT done any movie type but, loads of photos and scans.

[please_just_work]

DaveA

Thanks for response. I am not an experienced enough computer expert to say it is definately Vista, I am just looking for any possible suggestions of what the problem might be or what I could try that I haven't already.

If it has always worked fine with your ext drive, do you think it could be because the files came from an XP machine?

Honestly, I'm not looking to throw mud at Vista, I just want to sort this problem out any way I can.

[DaveA]

These files that I have transferred con from XP, 2K and 98 machines. No I do not think it is because they came from a XP machine.

The files format is the same regardless of the OS.

[ggodinez]

hey please_just_work,
did u fix this problem?...cuz i have the same problem and ive tried everything i can to fixed it and i have not been able to do so...plz help me..wat can i do????

[please_just_work]

Hi, unfotunately it's a bit of a sorry tale.

After several months and hours (actually days) of working on this problem, including user forums such as this one and paid support, I finally bit the bullet and paid £60 to Microsoft to fix it.

I had a microsoft tech spend 3 hours working remotely on my PC and he could not fix it. I then had a senior microsoft tech spend a further 2 hours trying to fix it before finally admitting that it was a Vista error and one they had only encountered on one other machine (somewhere in the States). He offered many apologies but untimately said at this stage Microsoft had no idea - and neither does anybody else seem to. He said I could wait for service pack 1 which 'might' be out at the end of October and 'might' fix it.

Final straw - I took my three and a half month old new PC costing £1000 back to PC World, hit the technicians with a long complaint about the problem and what I had done to fix it, then produced the email from Microsoft saying they could not fix it. After looking at the system themselves for a couple of days, PC World agreed to bend their rules and offered me a new machine off the shelf for equal value. A little sweetner to my wasted hours was that I managed to upgrade the faulty dual-core PC to a new quad-core for the same price.

I now have a brand new super-fast HP PC, with Vista Home Premium, and my 100 gig of trouble files have transfered perfectly to the new machine without any problems.

Sorry to those staunch Vista defenders, but this problem WAS with the version of Vista that was on my original PC, it affects very few, and there appears to be no fix for it. I'm sorry I can't give you better news, but if you really have tried everything the only thing I can recommend is taking the PC back to the retailer and making them see how useless this problem renders it. Hopefully you will get your money back.

Good luck.

[ggodinez]

thanks a lot..
i will take my computer to staples where i bought it, i paid more than $250 for the insurance, i know they have to do something about it......
once again thanks for the advice...