I have a Dell 530S that came in a package with a Brother MFC-240C printer/fax/copier/scanner. When I scan a photo in through Window’s Photo Gallery, it appears in a folder, but when I try to “open” it I get one of two messages: Photo Gallery can’t open this picture or video. The file appears to be damaged or corrupted OR this file format is not supported or you do not have the latest updates to Photo Gallery. I checked for updates and there are none needed at this time. Please, please help me. Microsoft won’t because Vista was pre-installed on my computer by Dell. Dell won’t help because they don’t take care of issues such as this. And I have a carry-in warranty with Best Buy (which is absolutely useless since this is a software issue). I use my computer mostly for work and secondly for my photos, so I am very frustrated right now. I have searched and searched for information on the web, but can’t come up with anything. Thank you!
Windows Photo Gallery seems to be very buggy and Microsoft really needs to fix this. But I’ll try and help you the best I can. First make sure you have all the settings correct when scanning your images follow these instructions from Microsoft. Read the “To scan a picture using Windows Photo Gallery” section of that page. Make sure to save the photos in JPEG format. If it’s in “.jpg” try renaming a photo to “.jpeg” to see if that helps any. Some older file extensions cannot be viewed in Windows Photo Gallery such as .gif extensions.
It sounds like Windows Photo Gallery is able to scan and place them in a folder. Are there actual photos inside? Are they .jpeg format? If you hover over the file with your mouse does it have a file size or does it say 0 KB? If there are actual pictures inside try using another photo editor to view it. Picasa is a very good alternative and it’s free. Download it and give it try.
Thank you so much for your quick response. I am and have been following the directions in the link you provided for scanning pictures. The problem I’m having is when I click on the File Type my only options are BMP, JPG, PNG and TIF. It does not give me the option of saving a scan as a JPEG as you suggested. The two photos that I have scanned in are in JPG format (as that was the closest option to JPEG) and they do have file sizes (in MB’s). So I believe that there are actual pictures there. I tried to open them up in Paint, but they won’t open up there either. Paint gives me a message: This is not a valid bitmap file or its format is not currently supported. Any further assistance you can offer would be greatly appreciated. My printer is supposed to be Vista compatable so I don’t understand why this is happening.
I’ve done some more searching. Do you think that this would help? I’m a little nervous doing anything with drivers.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/Details.aspx?type=Hardware&p=MFC-240C%2025%2F20ppm%206000x1200dpi%20Print%2FCopy%2FScan%2FFax&v=Brother&uid=MFC240C&pf=0&pi=2&c=Printers%20%26%20Scanners&sc=Multifunction&os=32-bit
That’s just might be what you need. Download and install it and hopefully that will fix your problem.