Auto-shut down of media folder

Septus

A little ways back I transferred some pictures from my digital camera to my computer's my pictures folder, something that I've done many times. That very night(I don't remember if it was immediate), I started getting an issue where seconds after opening that folder, or accessing it through my Canon camera program or Paint etc, the folder is shut down and I'm given a Data Execution Prevention error.

It seems that the most likely culprit is the transfer of the pictures, and maybe something got corrupted in the process, but I have no idea how to isolate the files that may have an issue, and whether or not I should tool around with disabling that protection to get to the folder.

Any ideas?

Septus

I just ran a scan on the folder with Norton and it found nothing.

That makes me think that I can probably disable the Data Execution Prevention mechanism, but then I still don't know how to find the root of the problem.

Septus

So, has anyone heard of a problem like this?

Turning off the Data Execution Prevention didn't help anything, it skips that initial error message and now just goes straight to closing the folder.

Seydlitz

Have you err, run scandisk?

Septus

Hmm, I'll have to try that as soon as I can find my windows disk, it wants to copy a bunch of stuff to a .dll file.

ProPatriaMori

Are thumbnails turned on for that folder? Does this still happen if they're not?

Septus

Hmm, that seems to have solved that problem. Is it likely that there's still an issue with one/some of the pictures in the folder, but now I can access the folder because they're not loading?

Wedge83

I had this same problems with videos at one point, what is happening is you're computer doesn't know how to display the pictures (in my case I didnt have the codec for the videos) but it still recognizes them as the right file types and tries to preview them thus crashing the folder.

As to exactly which files are causing it I'm not sure, a bit odd it is happening with pictures.

ProPatriaMori

It's especially weird that it's stuff from your camera. It tripping the DEP stuff makes me want to say that it's one of those attacks where you append executable code to the end of a GIF, and Windows realizes it's there and says "I'll run that!" instead of...not running it.

But yeah, sounds like it might be a malformed file. I'm not /sure/ this will work, but I bet it will--
1) Find the picture(s) that are causing the problem by moving them into another folder (that has thumbnails turned on) in chunks and watching for the crash. When it happens, your picture is in that lump. Move pictures from that lump one by one into the folder until it happens and you know which file it is.
2) Open that picture in your editor of choice and re-save it. You might have to change a pixel in an out of the way place to make absolutely sure that the program saves it, but I doubt it.

Hopefully, the act of re-saving it will cure its problem. If these are JPEGs or some other lossy format you might lose some quality, though.

Edit: Just going with my guess that you're shooting in JPEGs, a program like this one might do you well too. Apparently it'll take trailing bytes off the end of JPEGs, among other things. I didn't read well enough into it to see if it does files in batches but if it does you wouldn't even have to find which picture is your problem; just run all your JPEGs through it. I found that with a google search for "remove trailing data from JPEGs."

Of course, that might not exactly be your problem at all, but one of those images is obviously malformed.

Septus

Wedge83 wrote: »

I had this same problems with videos at one point, what is happening is you're computer doesn't know how to display the pictures (in my case I didnt have the codec for the videos) but it still recognizes them as the right file types and tries to preview them thus crashing the folder.

As to exactly which files are causing it I'm not sure, a bit odd it is happening with pictures.

One bit of info that I omitted, that is my "my pictures" folder, but it's also where my digital camera dumps my recorded .avis as well.

And thanks for the idea, Pro, I'll give that a shot.

Thomamelas

Septus wrote: »

Wedge83 wrote: »

I had this same problems with videos at one point, what is happening is you're computer doesn't know how to display the pictures (in my case I didnt have the codec for the videos) but it still recognizes them as the right file types and tries to preview them thus crashing the folder.

As to exactly which files are causing it I'm not sure, a bit odd it is happening with pictures.

One bit of info that I omitted, that is my "my pictures" folder, but it's also where my digital camera dumps my recorded .avis as well.

And thanks for the idea, Pro, I'll give that a shot.

It could very well be the video. I've seen windows do that with conflicts with MJPEG decoders. Morgan Multimedia and Peagus in particular didn't play well with each other.

A quick way to see if it's the decoders is to check the Windows System log.

ProPatriaMori

Oh yeah, I've had all kinds of problems with thumbnailing video before. Aside from the fact that it thrashes the disk since I turn caching off (hate you, thumbs.db, hate you so much).

But yeah, Thomamelas (nice name btw) has a point. If you've downloaded some extra codecs, those could be giving you problems with video thumbnails.