Windows Photo Viewer Can't display pictures copied from 'Your Phone'

wiganken · 15 Mar 2021

Windows 10 Pro v20h2, Build 19042.867

All photos can be viewed by Windows Photo Viewer except for those photos copied onto my PC from the 'Your Phone' user interface.
These same photos can be viewed if I use 'Open with' Firefox or Windows Photos. It is only Windows Photo Viewer that displays the message "Windows Photo Viewer cannot display this picture because here might not be enough memory available on your computer. Close some programs that you aren't using or free some hard disk space and try again". Task manager shows memory is only 47% used and there is 146 GB free disk space so no problem as far as I can see.

Why is it only photos copied from 'Your Phone' UI that are affected?

I believe Windows Photo Viewer has been deprecated by Microsoft so is this MS way of trying to 'push' people to use 'Windows Photos' instead of 'Windows Photo Viewer' or is it a known incompatibility that has a fix/workaround?

Does anyone know any fix/workaround please?

Ghot · 15 Mar 2021

@wiganken

Best solution is stop using Photo Viewer.

Switch to XnView
XnView . The Best Windows Photo Viewer, Image Resizer and Batch Converter

You want to scroll down a bit and get the "Minimal" version. Get the installer (setup).

Windows Photo Viewer Can't display pictures copied from 'Your Phone'-image1.png

It looks like this. It does everything. It has a slide show. You can make the thumbnails any size.
It'll do batch operations, editing, animations, etc. It does EVERYthing, and doesn't break after every Windows Update.

Windows Photo Viewer Can't display pictures copied from 'Your Phone'-0000-xnview.png

wiganken · 15 Mar 2021

Thank you. I'll look into it and also IrfanView. I believe both are good so I'll see which I find suits me best because I only need the basics like viewing, cropping, resizing and annotating.

I know Windows Photo Viewer is just a viewer and does not do editing stuff but any replacement should be simple and include simple editing.

................................................................................

OK. I tried XnView and it seems a stand-alone program that does not install. This means I cannot set it as default viewer. I like to be able to double-click on an image file which launches the viewer. XnViewer does not allow this. Irfanview is better for this purpose because it installs onto the PC and so I have opted for IrfanView.

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of changing viewer rather than trying to find a fix for Windows Photo Viewer.

Dirk Gently · 20 Mar 2021

I've been running into this issue for a while too, although i don't know what the 'Your Phone' UI is that you mention. For me it usually goes like this:

1) Take Screenshot on Phone or download image to Phone storage.
2) Connect Data cable between Phone and PC
3) Enable Data Transfer in Phone Notification
4) Use Windows Explorer to Copy or Move image from Phone storage to PC.

Photo Viewer will refuse to open that image with the error that you mentioned, no matter what. It's very strange. Would love to hear an explanation for this behaviour.

Of course 'Mass Storage' hasn't been a thing for a long time in Android and it's all MTP now. I don't know if that's a factor? As far as i'm concerned an image is an image. Why would Photo Viewer throw a hissy fit just because it was transfered off of a Phone?

Tres bizarre!

Ghot · 20 Mar 2021

wiganken said:

Thank you. I'll look into it and also IrfanView. I believe both are good so I'll see which I find suits me best because I only need the basics like viewing, cropping, resizing and annotating.

I know Windows Photo Viewer is just a viewer and does not do editing stuff but any replacement should be simple and include simple editing.

................................................................................

OK. I tried XnView and it seems a stand-alone program that does not install. This means I cannot set it as default viewer. I like to be able to double-click on an image file which launches the viewer. XnViewer does not allow this. Irfanview is better for this purpose because it installs onto the PC and so I have opted for IrfanView.

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of changing viewer rather than trying to find a fix for Windows Photo Viewer.

I didn't know you wanted to install it. In that case get the "setup" version, rather than the "zip" version.
The "setup" version is the installer.

This is true of most programs that offer a setup and a zip version.

Also, most like the Minimal version, but there is also the Standard and Extended versions. You can read the differences just above the download links.

Sorry about the delay in answering. This is a huge forum, there is a "Notification" button up at the top of the screen. To light it up and notify someone, either quote what they said or add an @ symbol just before their account name

Like... @wiganken

Berton · 20 Mar 2021

The only real issue I have with Photos is that the first time it's opened after booting up is it appears to index ALL the photos on drives attached to the computer and attached to the Network [anything File Explorer can see], takes some time. After closing Photos and reopening some time later the process is noticeably faster.

wiganken · 21 Mar 2021

Answer to Dirk Gently - The 'Your Phone UI" I refer to is the Microsoft app 'Your Phone and UI means User Interface. I have placed a shortcut on the desktop and the UI launches. The phone connects to the computer via Wi-Fi not bluetooth so no cables. THe UI is very clear and allows me to drag pics from phone to computer. See partial picture.

Windows Photo Viewer Can't display pictures copied from 'Your Phone'-your-phone-ui.png

Incidentally Irfanview works fine with all pictures after a couple of tweaks. It is only Windows Photo Viewer that is the problem.

Ghot - Thanks for following this with more info.

Callender · 21 Mar 2021

Possibly the pictures that are imported from your phone are in .heic format. If that's the case you can install this to allow windows photo viewer to open the images:

Open HEIC files on Windows

Berton · 21 Mar 2021

As @Ghot mentioned the setup.exe installs the program. The .zip version is decompressed into a Folder which can be on the computer's drive or on an External drive such as a USB Thumb drive and ran from there.

wiganken · 21 Mar 2021

@Callender

All pictures from my smart phone are in the same jpg format as the rest of but maybe the smart phone pictures contain metadata that Windows Photo Viewer (WPV) can't handle?

Either way IrfanView handles them all fine so that's OK. I may give the installed version of XnView another go to see if it better still.

Thank you.