Moving between 98 and 2000 corupted all of my JPG

[tango]

Well, I never imagined this could happen. I transferred a folder with about 500 jpg images from a win2000 drive to a winME drive in my dual boot computer.

I reformated the win2000 drive and now want to transfer the images back to the win2000 drive. Using ACD 3.1 and Photoshop 6, I can't open any of the files. Photoshop tells me that they are corrupted in various fashions. I could copy and paste the error messages if that would help.

My question is whether anyone knows of a program that can open and repair corrupted JPG files. A batch feature would be terrific.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Toejam31]

There's a batch conversion feature built into ACDSee. It doesn't have to display the files in order to convert them. Right-click on a file, or a group of files, and choose "Convert" from the menu. You can also alter the conversion settings for each file type.

Next time, when you wish to move files like this, ZIP them up, first ... and then test the archive for errors. Or back up the files onto disk. That's the best way to be certain that your data is secure.

Toejam31

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>

 

[jc14all]

Not sure if this will work on corrupted files, but it is a nice tool that you can download to evaluate (free), which convert various file types. Try it <A HREF="http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gwspro.html#download" target="_new">Graphic Workshop Pro</A> and tell me if it helped.

JC-------<*){{{>{~~~~~
Fisher of men

 

[tango]

Tried Graphic Workshop Pro and ACDSEE 3.1, but both didn't work. Caled ACD Systems, they're just down the road from me, they suggested that their Classic version might work, because it applies a filter on a "best fit" basis rather than looking at the image header for what filter to use.

Nothing is working. Graphic Workshop Pro can't recognize the garbled marker information.

I've now found other folders that are also corrupted by the move. Not every jpg was corrupted, but about 75% of them.

Any more ideas, other than using the SDK from ACD Systems to write a VB plug-in to unscramble corrupted jpg markers. That's a little beyond my capability, athough they said they would market it if I could write it. I'm looking for something that's already being used, but all of my searching and researching isn't turning up anything.

More help would be appreciated.

 

[jc14all]

In your original post you mentioned that you were getting some error messages. All I could find that could possibly relate to your problem was <A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q129/9/71.asp?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Windows Me corrupt Windows 2000 files&rnk=9&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WINME" target="_new">here</A>. I really wish I could help but this is a new problem that I have never heard of before, but Win Me is in a class of its own and can have some strange problems. Please post here again if you figure it out. I would be interested to know.

JC-------<*){{{>{~~~~~
Fisher of men

 

[NickM]

Not saying that I’m ready to provide an immediate solution.
It’s not a proper way to try help when some of essential information is not provided yet.

It looks very interesting, that some files are intact.
What does it show you, that the files are corrupted? What’s the exact error message?
Can you transfer just one of your corrupted files from one location to another?
Also onto another machine(s) with the setting similar to yours (using a diskette)? Back to Win98?
What about the file names? Any other then English languages were on previous installations? Just in case. Sometimes on a new installation the same code page support from previous installation is needed.

 

[tango]

Thanks for the continued interest in my problem. I'll be more specific about the details and I'll provide the hardware configuration at the end of this post.

Here's the background. Just built the new computer and had everything on 2 Maxtor drives. On drive was dual boot, with C: having the Win98se and D: was the Win2000 and E: was loaded with data and still FAT32 under Win98. I didn't want to transfer the data or convert to NTFS until I had D: configured just the way I wanted it.

Then I decided to take an old 6.1 GB drive and a Promise Ultra66 controller and install them, load WinME and boot from there. Got that all configured and bootable. Then I transferred the data from Win2000 to the Quantum drive and to the other FAT32 drive, transferring from within WIN2000. Crammed both drives to the gills with data thereby emptying the Win2000 drive. I then repartioned and got rid of the FAT32 partition, made it all one big 43GB NTFS partition, loaded Win2000 back on, loaded the video, sound, motherboard drivers and then started bringing over the data I had moved. Next I did fresh installs of my graphics programs. Now I tried to open some of the jpg and avi files. Therein is my problem. None of my Photoshop files, not one, are corrupted. Here is the error message generated by PhotoShop:

"Could not open (Filename).jpg because an unknown or invalid jpeg marker type is found."

ACDSee 3.1 doesn't give an error message. Graphic WorkShop Pro can't recognize the format of the file.

It's pretty obvious to me that the header information got scrambled. I don't think the files are missing data, but I can't be sure of that because I don't have a way to compare before and after file sizes. With the headers scrambled, the image processing applications don't know what to do with the data that is in the file.

Over at desktoppublishing.com (heavy MAC representation) they're telling me to go buy a MAC. Not too helpful. But there is a MAC application called ResEdit. Resource editing; something to do with resource forks, etc. Haven't follwed that up too much other than a preliminary search to see if a resource editor is available for the PC platform (but I still don't know what a resource editor does). It's a lead, it sound like it's a low level utility, and all of my chips are being placed on that bet, because the graphics programs need to first recognize the file as jpg, or at least a damaged jpg with an intact header, and it looks like the headers are scrambled on 75% of my jpgs.

Here is some advice from a poster at desktoppublishing.com: "buy a mac or look for resedit for the pc, open a working jpeg file, make a note of its type and creator, then open a damaged file and change its settings to that of the working jpeg." Other than buying a mac to fix my problem, I'd like a PC application that can perform the task he specifies in the quote.

Here's some of my thoughts. Photoshop files, rars, zips, exe, dll, are all intact. Only the majority of jpg and some avi files were corrupted. Both involve header information and compression (but so do rar and zip - go figure) and that is what got scrambled.

Norton Utilities didn't help, it didn't recognize the files as corrupt jpg so it didn't try to fix them.

I've got surge suppressors on all of my equipment and a UPS system on the computer, so I don't think it was a power spike that corrupted the files.

The corrupted files were initially moved from a Win98 (28 GB) drive to Win2000 NTFS. Transfer worked fine and none were corrupted. Then those same files were moved to a 6.1 GB drive (FAT32) and back to the original 28 GB (FAT32). At this point I didn't check to make sure that they transferred uncorrupted. Win2000 didn't report any troubles with the transfer. Then I brought the files from the 6.1 drive back into the newly partitioned and formatted NTFS drive and discovered the problem. The files on the 28 GB (FAT32) I haven't moved and they are corrupted as well. So, I surmise the corruption took place when the transfer went from NTFS to the 2 FAT32 drives.

An ideal soultion would be a program which can look at jpg header information and rearrange it on a best guess basis. It would have to open the file without recognizing it as a jpg, because the other programs won't open the files with the headers telling the application that it is a jpg file.

I'd rather have a best guess at rearranging the header information and getting something from the image files that I can salvage rather than just dumping the files because nothing can open them.

Phew. I hope some one has an idea of what can help. This has me totally mystified. I'd understand it if my computer got hit with a big electrical spike, or I shut it down in the middle of a transfer, or something of that nature, but a routine file transfer between NTFS and FAT32 shouldn't corrupt jpg header but not damage other file types.

Hardware Configuration:

Asus A7a-266 MB
512 MB PC2100 DDR-RAM (Mushkin)
Athlon 1.33 GHz 266 FSB
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 (OEM)
ATI Radeon 64 MB DDR VIVO
RealTek RTL8139(A)PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
Canopus DV-Raptor Firewire Capture Card
Promise Ultra/66 ATA Adapter
Plextor 8/4/32 CD-RW
Pioneer 106c DVD player
Quantum Fireball Ultra66 6.1GB ST IDE
Maxtor ATA100 28 GB, 2MB cache, 7200 rpm IDE
Maxtor ATA100 43 GB, 2MB cache, 7200 rpm IDE

BIOS set to boot from Promise controller which controls the Quantum 6.1 GB drive, currently running WinME.

 

[tango]

NickM

To answer your questions: I can transfer the files from one location to another. They're just unrecognizable. Back and forth between WinME and Win200 and to a Floppy is no problem. File names are all intact and unchanged. No previous languages installed.

And an answer to a question you didn't ask. I have no bad sectors on the hard drives. So it shouldn't be the media causing the damage, unless Norton and scandisk can't detect the bad sectors.

Also, we're dealing with only 3 different folders that held the files. The drives weren't optimized prior to the transfer, so there was fragmentation of the files and I'm quite sure that they weren't contiguous to each other. I suspect that they were scattered all over the drives.

 

[tango]

Just some more information. I've been checking all of the files I transferred and they're all functioning properly, but now I've discovered some WinRAR archives have been corrupted. Nowhere near 75%, like the jpg's, but about 5% of my rar files. You've probably guessed that they can't be repaired and you're right. They can't be extracted so the whole series of rar archives are now garbage too.

I also check for viruses quite regularly, have the latest definitions, and performed a complete scan before I started this whole process. So I'm ruling out a virus doing this.

So, when I wrote in the earlier post that the rar archives were unaffected, well I spoke too soon. A few are scrambled but they report the same size as the other files in the archive. They fail the CRC though.

Well, everything else that was transferred (and not compressed) is working A-OK.

I'm completely baffled.

 

[BOOZy]

This sounds weird but, your Soundblaster Live! might have caused the problem... see: http://www.viahardware.com/686b_1.shtm

for more details.

 

[NickM]

Unfortunately we still can’t help Tango.
First after reading the post I suspected some possible problem related to an incompatibility of system settings or just weird case caused by ribbon cable or drive controller.
The company I used to work for, had been dealing with collecting digital photo shots from remote sites via WAN/LAN and Internet, also developing pictures from scanned images , and sending them to companies in different locations and countries. Different OS and editing software were used. For 2 year I haven't heard about any seriously damaged files.

Well, now there's something new to know.
Thank you, BOOZy, at least now we know where else to expect the danger from.