Windows photo viewer can't run because not enough memory?

Question

Just got a weird error. I was sent an image on email, opened the email in Outlook (Office 365 version) and double clicked image to open. I got this error:

"Windows Photo Viewer can't display this picture because there might not be enough memory available on your computer. Close some programs that you aren't using or free some hard disk space (if it's almost full) and then try again."

Few points:

• I've always used photo viewer on this laptop and not had an issue before. I restarted and tried to open the image again but no luck.
• The image is not corrupted. I saved to desktop, tried to open, same issue. I opened with Photoshop, that worked fine. I saved it down from PSD as a new JPG. The new JPG also displays the same message.
• Any image I've tried to open results in this error.
• The image is 200KB in size, res of 1428x2000.
• My laptop has 32GB of RAM, and currently using 8GB of that according to task manager.

What I've tried:

This post from Microsoft: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7b6ae08b-4b5c-443b-9d43-e87ca5e7aeb1/wndows-photo-viewer-operation?forum=w7itproappcompat

• This didn't work because when I get to colour management, I have no profiles set up so I can't delete.

I've seen this post: Windows Photo Viewer needs more ram?

• I have 2 video cards built in: standard Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 and an Nvidia Quadro M1000M. I've tried the resolution in the post (moving it to different monitors powered by different video card) and nothing changed.

Disk clean up. Had plenty of spare space anyway but nothing changed.

Specs: I'm running Windows 10 v1909 Build 18363.535 on a Lenovo P50 laptop with 32GB memory, 500GB storage (currently 192GB free), Intel Core i7-6700HQ .

Appreciate if anyone can help fix this. The new Microsoft Photos app is absolutely terrible and I will avoid it at all costs.

Answer 1

I dig this issue because I had similar problem with photos exported from Android Send Reduced Free application.

This issue in my case is related to included Profile-icc in that JPG file.

  Profiles:
  Profile-icc: 536 bytes

It can be verified with ImageMagick identify -verbose command.

This is maybe not solution for Opening it right from Outlook but You can fix that files in source.

I've discovered that when I run convert BADFILE.jpg -strip GOODFILE.jpg command on that file it opens on Windows 7 Photo Viewer without any problem.

-strip  - strip image of all profiles and comments

You can get this whole tool here: https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php

So if You want make that all images again accessible just run batch on them:

mogrify.exe -format jpg -verbose -path C:\OUTPUT_DIR -strip *.jpg

Might be also used relative path like -path OUTPUT_DIR if You want them in subfolder.

If You have to open that files directly from Outlook I'd recommend for example IrfanView which does not have problem with opening that files. Just set it as default graphics files program.

Some people adviced something related to changeing default profiles in Your screen configuration, but I have it set to my Monitor type so I don't want to mess with that settings.

If You want this fully automatic You need 3 things:

1. DefaultProgramsEditor ( https://defaultprogramseditor.com/ )
2. ImageMagick ( https://imagemagick.org/download/binaries/ImageMagick-7.0.10-1-portable-Q16-x64.zip )
3. Batch script which will process opened file.

1) First decompress ImageMagick to c:\apps\ImageMagick-7.0.10-1-portable-Q16-x64

2) Create batch script c:\apps\gfxopen.bat:

@echo off
C:\Apps\ImageMagick-7.0.10-1-portable-Q16-x64\convert.exe %1 -strip c:\temp\temp12345file.jpg

rundll32 "C:\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer\PhotoViewer.dll", ImageView_Fullscreen c:\temp\temp12345file.jpg

del c:\temp\temp12345file.jpg

3) Decompress DefaultProgramsEditor and run it, then choose File Type Settings > Context Menu > find jpg extension, then > Add...

Command name: Open Fixed Image

Program path: "C:\apps\gfxopen.bat" "%1"

Then choose "Open Fixed Image" and press "Set selected command as default"

Then Save context menu

That's all :)

Answer 2

I got the same issue and solved it following simple steps:

• Open image file with Notepad++, or any other similar hex editors.
• Find ICC_PROFILE inside the text and replace to ICC_PROFILX (generally on the first text line of file)
• Save the edited file. That is all!

Before After

Answer 3

Type color in the windows startmenu search box and open the Colour Management.

Go then to the Advanced tab and select Agfa:Swop Standard for the Device Profile

Answer 4

Windows Photo Viewer has a bug where .jpg files made with invalid ICC profiles (such as Android 9+ screenshots) would render an error as you shown.

Someone actually took their time and patched the app accordingly. No need to install ICC profiles/modify JPGs. Source code, instructions and release app is in the link bellow:

https://github.com/PaaaulZ/PhotoViewerOutOfMemoryNoMore

Answer 5

I fixed this problem by unTick ICC Profile: sRGB when saving jpg with Photoshop.

See Properties of the image:

Answer 6

For any Android developers who may come across this: Seems that Windows Photo Viewer doesn't like the ICC profile metadata that Bitmap.compress writes (maybe it doesn't like any ICC profiles actually? I haven't checked).

Here's a way to simply strip out that metadata segment from the JPEG file, which results in a JPEG that is compatible with Windows Photo Viewer again:

    // Some image viewer applications (such as Windows Photo Viewer) doesn't seem to like the ICC profile meta data that Android's Bitmap.compress writes.
    // This decorator removes the section.
    private static class RemoveFFE2OutputStreamDecorator extends OutputStream {
        OutputStream underlyingStream;
        boolean marker = false;
        boolean skipSegment = false;

        public RemoveFFE2OutputStreamDecorator(OutputStream underlyingStream) {
            this.underlyingStream = underlyingStream;
        }

        @Override
        public void write(int b) throws IOException {
            // Based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Syntax_and_structure
            if (this.marker) {
                this.marker = false;
                if ((b & 0xFF) == 0xE2) { // The 0xFF,0xE2 segment that Android writes seems to cause trouble with Windows Photo Viewer.
                    this.skipSegment = true;
                } else {
                    this.skipSegment = false;
                    this.underlyingStream.write(0xFF);
                    this.underlyingStream.write(b);
                }
            } else if ((b & 0xFF) == 0xFF) {
                this.marker = true;
            } else if (!this.skipSegment) {
                this.underlyingStream.write(b);
            }
        }

        @Override
        public void flush() throws IOException {
            this.underlyingStream.flush();
        }

        @Override
        public void close() throws IOException {
            this.underlyingStream.close();
        }
    }