Truncated Images in Windows Vista?

[Kawidude]

I've heard all the bad press about upgrading to Windows Vista. Unfortunately, here at work, we had the need for a new desktop system. We upgraded last week to an eMachines T5230 with Windows Vista. The first few days we had issues with our software working properly. We got all the bugs worked out but I'm still having an issue which has all but crippled this machine for us.

I work at a photography studio, so typically I will take photos in the shooting room, pull the CF card, move the images off the card and onto an external hard drive. Once the images are transferred I use either ULead Photo Explorer or Irfanview to preview the images. Once an image is selected, I open it in Photoshop to do the retouching. Once finished there I typically burn a disc for the client and I'm done.

For some reason, I can't get images off the CF card and onto the hard drive without it truncating all of my images. It's already bitten me once with a real estate agent that I'll have to reshoot at no charge. The really strange thing is that as a last resort I opened all of her images in Photoshop right from the CF card. They all appeared fine. I rotated them and retouched them as usual. I saved all of the files on the drive and they looked fine. The next morning I reopened the files and they were all truncated again (in PS and ULead).

When I plug the CF card into the front of the computer I can view the little preview images and they all look fine. So I move them onto the hard drive and attempt to look at them and they're all truncated for some reason. The weird thing is that they truncate differently depending upon the program that I'm using to view the images.

Does anyone have a remote idea as to what may be causing this? I've got a ton of real estate agents coming in on Thursday afternoon and this system is basically worthless to me.

I have attached two sample images to give you an idea of what the truncated images look like. The first one is what they typically look like in ULead and the second is what they typically look like in Photoshop. ANY help or far-out suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!! (You don't need to tell me to get a Mac either ;) )

 

[2strok4fun]

So far I am not so happy with Vista. Installed 2 peices of software and nothing has run correct yet.

Sorry cant help. Seems much of the problems revolve around IE-7

 

[IndyMX]

Vista made my machine run like an old 286.. That and the fact that USB didn't work under Vista, so I think I'll just stay with XP..

 

[Kawidude]

I'm just stumped. I can't get images off of any CF cards here and onto any of our numerous drives without it truncating all of them. If I take them upstairs to my older XP desktop, everything works fine.

 

[XRpredator]

my ol' man got a new computer (hp, I think) with the vista on it, and I believe he is able to pull images off whatever kind of card is in his digicamera. Matter of fact, I think the machine has a slot just for the card.

Mind you, he's coming off a reeeeeal slooooow machine just prior to the upgrade, and it doesn't take much to impress him. Just the fact that he can turn the machine on and make his chess game work tells me that Vista can't be all that user unfriendly.

 

[kylee]

Not sure if this is helpful....
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/w...nding-raw-image-support-in-windows-vista.aspx
http://www.adidap.com/tag/windows-vista

It looks like there are several possible CF recovery tool. Why would you need to reshoot?

 

[Kawidude]

my ol' man got a new computer (hp, I think) with the vista on it, and I believe he is able to pull images off whatever kind of card is in his digicamera. Matter of fact, I think the machine has a slot just for the card.

Mind you, he's coming off a reeeeeal slooooow machine just prior to the upgrade, and it doesn't take much to impress him. Just the fact that he can turn the machine on and make his chess game work tells me that Vista can't be all that user unfriendly.

Yep, ours has 5 slots right on the front as well. I've never had probelms like this with built-in slots before. Maybe I need to load a chess game to make it work properly? ;)

Thanks for the links kylee. We actually use Fuji cameras in-studio and we don't shoot in RAW mode. It's weird because I can open the images right off the CF card on the Vista machine and they show up corrupted. But if I pull the card and plug it into my older XP machine, everything works fine. Really weird...

 

[kylee]

Try this one.
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/547097-very-strange-vista-problem-corrupt.html

The thread wants to focus on possible networking issues (copying from Vista to XP), but many other possible suggestions pop up like third party security programs, and Realtek, lan drivers, to mention a few.

Incidentally, I have a friend who copies large amounts of videos files... Who tried disabling the Vista security features. His opinion, based on the consensus on the video forums, is that Vista was permanently problematic for this task. He elected to go back to XP.

One opinion might be that if XP works, your solution is to go with XP.

 

[Kawidude]

Try this one.
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/547097-very-strange-vista-problem-corrupt.html

The thread wants to focus on possible networking issues (copying from Vista to XP), but many other possible suggestions pop up like third party security programs, and Realtek, lan drivers, to mention a few.

Incidentally, I have a friend who copies large amounts of videos files... Who tried disabling the Vista security features. His opinion, based on the consensus on the video forums, is that Vista was permanently problematic for this task. He elected to go back to XP.

One opinion might be that if XP works, your solution is to go with XP.

Hmm, I'm going to dig through that link a bit. What sort of chore/cost is it to change a Vista machine back to XP, assuming it was never an XP machine to begin with? Thanks again for the info!!!

 

[Okiewan]

Not cheap. 1600 will get you a nice Mac running OS-X. Vista is the most bloated, POS MS has ever released.

 

[JD_MXRacer]

i dont see why everyone hates vista. i just got it like a month ago and havent had any problems with it. i like it. its different and has some cool features.

 

[kylee]

Here's another discussion at how Vista destroys photo metadata:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/windows-vista-destroys-photo-metadata-235461.php

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6157801-7.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

 

[Tennessee Thumper]

Not cheap. 1600 will get you a nice Mac running OS-X. Vista is the most bloated, POS MS has ever released.

I have a feeling Leopard is really going to make Vista look like an even bigger POS. :nod:

 

[XRpredator]

I have a feeling Leopard is really going to make Vista look like an even bigger POS. :nod:

two strokes suck

 

[cnielse5]

I have swore my next computer is going to be a mac. 2 of my co-workers got vista equipped computers and they have been nothing but trouble. I don't want to give microsoft another Dime!
I used to work at a place that we just had Mac's and I never had a problem.

 

[Kawidude]

Thanks again for the links kylee! I've got a friend who is really computer savvy coming over to take a look at the machine this evening. I have saved all of those links to the favorites folder so he can check them out and see if they make some sense or help fix the problem.

Like I said, a switch to a Mac isn't possible right now, but I'm giving it some serious thought for my next home desktop. I guess that's more brilliant Microsoft strategy... Releasing a product before it's ready for large segments of the market and almost forcing people to switch to the alternative. It sounds like Vista is working great for people playing chess games and surfing the net. But it's not so hot for people that rely on it to run a business. Sheesh...

 

[rmc_olderthandirt]

Kawidude:

First off, my experience with Vista is that it sucks. Nine months ago I had a pre-release version of Vista that I was testing my companies products on. Used the same motherboard & peripherals, just swapped hard disk to go between XP and Vista. Vista was noticably slower and just was a pain to deal with.

I have also encountered several people who have bought a new laptop/PC that had Vista loaded on it and they ended up re-formatting thier hard disk and loading XP because there was some program that they had to run (such as schematic capture or similar work related programs) that simply would not run under Vista. The "LM" licensing servers seem to have issues with Vista.

As for your specific problem: I am going to take a wild guess and say that when you wrote the files the output file was not closed properly. What can happen is that there can be a cache memory, either in the CPU itself or in the disk drive that is used to speed up operations. When an application "writes" the data doesn't necessarily end up on the media right away, it can linger in the cahce for a while.

This can be a major problem when writing to a removable media and you remove it wihtout closing it properly. The common cases are USB flash drives that get yanked out without properly shutting down. It is possible (common, in fact) that the directory structure has not been fully updated and the last portion of a file that was written may get lost.

You indicated that you burned the files to a disk, which I assume is a CD. I have never seen this kind of issue when writing a CD before, but I would not be surprised if the Vista operating system has a bug where they are not flushing the CPU cache properly.

If it is a cache problem I would expect Microsoft to fix it pretty quick and have a patch available to download. You should check the Windows website and see if there are any updates to Vista.

Rod

 

[kylee]

How is the troubleshooting coming Kawidude?

rmc_older.../Kawidude: That cache theory intrigues me. I recall seeing these sort of image issues many years ago- . It makes it doubly frustrating.

Just for fun here's another article on public sentiment running against Vista.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6197757.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

I'm disappointed that one of the software programmers or other photo experts didn't pick up on this discussion. Please let us know how you resolve this, Kawidude.

Incidentally, the article mentions that Photoshop released an "upgrade" for Vista to make it functional. For $199. Ouch. Did you upgrade your Photoshop when you got the e-machine?

Ulead is also offering Vista update service packs. Which edition are you running, and did you update for Vista yet?

I'm sorry I didn't think of the obvious earlier.

 

[Kawidude]

I had my IT guy sit with this machine for 4 or 5 hours and he came to a conclusion...Vista blows! He couldn't figure out what was causing this whole ordeal. We downloaded the patch that would make our version of Photoshop compatible with Vista. I checked a week ago and none of the latest versions of ULead's PhotoExplorer were "certified Vista compatible." We downloaded a trial version of ULead's 8.5, but the problem still exists. The best we can figure is that Vista is somehow altering the image right as it comes off of the CF card. It's fine on the card, but ANY program we use to view it shows the files corrupted. I can pull the card and slap it into our older XP machines and they work fine. The Vista machine has the CF card reader built right into the front of it.

So our quick fix is that I'm running a laptop with our second monitor plugged into it (so clients can view images). The laptop sits about 3" away from a very expensive eMachines paperweight. We are going to buy a version of XP and then get rid of Vista and install XP. It's nice when you buy the "latest and greatest" of computers and then you have to spend another $299 to DOWNGRADE the OS.

We walked into Office Depot just to check the box for XP's system requirements and right as we entered there was a huge monitor with a giant sign that said, "Windows Vista...the WOW starts here!" I wanted to put my foot through that thing.

 

[TwinSpar]

We walked into Office Depot just to check the box for XP's system requirements and right as we entered there was a huge monitor with a giant sign that said, "Windows Vista...the WOW starts here!" I wanted to put my foot through that thing.

Welcome to the VHC... Vista Haters Club! It's the biggest POS OS I have ever seen. I was the test subject at my company and I'm still having to suffer the piece of junk. I've taken to calling it Fista! I'm sure you are well in touch with that feeling!