Messed up Images in Vista Home Premium

It seems that any images that I try to put on my HP Vista desktop from any other source (i.e. digital camera card, XP laptop) end up being messed up - bars running through images, half the image gone, etc.

The strange thing, is that yesterday when I tried this out with a digital camera card, the image thumbnails viewed correctly and then literally seconds later, they transformed before my eyes to screwed up pics. If I open the images, they are also messed up, so it's not just viewing them via thumbnails. The odd thing, is that if vista originates the pics, i.e. downloaded stockphotography, then everything is just fine.

I spent probably 45 minutes to an hour on the phone with an HP guy last night who had me download the service pack for Vista, but that didn't fix my problem.

We're planning on vacation next week and I was going to take the laptop and the digital camera, but it sounds like I won't be able to take the images and put them on the desktop (only the laptop) unless I can figure out what's causing this problem.

If anyone had a thought on this, I'd really appreciate it.

Dawn

Hi, DawnB, and welcome to the forums.

Have you verified that all of your drivers on the machine are the most recent ones available from either the HP website or else from the hardware manufacturer(s)' sites?

I'd addition to JohnGalt's advice about checking for the latest drivers (both for the computer and the digital camera), I'd verify also that the link between computer and camera is working correctly, because it sounds to me like the entire file is not being transferred.

Let me guess - when you say "messed up", I take it you mean that half the image shows, with the bottom half grayed out? This is usually the symptom of a JPG file that is incomplete.

If your camera stores its photos on a SD Card, or some other similar device, have you tried to use a card reader to "upload" the photos? In other words, don't link the camera, take the SD Card out and plug it directly into your computer SD Card reader (if you have one), and then try to manually copy the photos. At the very least, this will help to determine where the problem lies...

Peter, I am not sure this is the case - specifically because of the OP saying this: Now that I think about it I wonder if this is in actuality a failing graphics card....

Dawn, if you're running Aero on your desktop, disable that and see if it helps. Also, try and see if setting the value of Control Panel --> System and Maintenance --> System -->Advanced tab --> Performance settings --> Visual Effects tab to adjust for best performance helps.