Question

How can I view this picture?

Asked by: Cosmo2b

Picture file says it is JPEG but will not open with any program I have, including Paint, Viewer, and others. I have tried changing the extension, also with no luck. Have also tried BadCopy Pro, PixRecovery and IrfanView. I believe it may have been taken in RAW or some other format and then possibly reassociated with the JPEG extension.

Does anyone know what the image equivalent would be for VLC Media Player? Or have other ideas for viewing this file? (There are many image files behaving the same way- not just one image.)

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Asked On
2008-08-10 at 22:59:39ID23637005
Tags

Graphic Formats

Topics

Images & Photo Software

,

Image Correction Software

,

Digital Cameras

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
11

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Answers

 

by: paogiverPosted on 2008-08-12 at 15:36:04ID: 22217700

Experts Exchange has scanned this file and found no viruses. Always perform a virus scan on every file you download from the Internet.

This file appears to be an Unknown Binary File, which is an unexpected type for files with this filename extension.

This is a 2.6 MB picture? must be super huge image resolution but it can be also an extension error file, which means it's converted to jpeg from another extension file originally. There's no way to open a wrong extension file or corrupted jpeg. try asking the person to reconvert again in a jpeg, not others format and then change to jpg to read it, it will not work.

 

by: tocardxPosted on 2008-08-13 at 18:33:02ID: 22227274

I'll look at it. 2.6 megs is not huge... That sounds just about right for a 8 megapixel raw file.

However, I have seen this before when a camera... it was either Kodak DCS SLR/n or Fuji S2 Pro... but it corrupted a Microdrive... which killed all the images, and the microdrive had to be reformatted because the file system was corrupted.  

 

by: edfeldman69Posted on 2008-08-20 at 20:28:15ID: 22275945

No luck.
I tried thumbs plus, photo shop cs2, fine pix viewer with raw converter all siad corrupt file. I tried all the normal extension combination.

 

by: Cosmo2bPosted on 2008-08-21 at 17:19:18ID: 22285418

The camera was a Canon Rebel. Does that open up any more options?

I also discovered that all the files currently unreadable have a modification time and date stamp within 15 minutes of each other. There's approximately 300 files all about the same size. What could do that kind of corruption so quickly across so many large files?

What about a data recovery specialist place? Do they have any tools you guys haven't already tried?

 

by: tocardxPosted on 2008-08-21 at 17:27:21ID: 22285456

Actually, I tried renaming the file to .cr2 first. (I happen to also have a Rebel)

But it still did not work as a Canon RAW format...

I would simply bet that the card became corrupt.

Is it a CF2, or a Minidisk?

This kind of thing is a more common error among minidisks.

You could back up the disk, and POSSIBLY run defrag or chkdsk on it...
That MIGHT work, but unfortunately, you probably just wrote a bunch of files onto a disk with bad sectors.

The disk will only be repaired with a format.
The other thing that can cause a corrupt disk, is doing a lot of dragging and dropping... In other words... moving files on and off the disk without formatting it in between shoots.

Then, one other thing that can kill a disk is to work off of it. These cards are not meant to be used like drives... so editing directly off the card can mess it up too... best practice is to shoot, copy the images to your local harddrive, and then format your card using your camera.

I'm gonna spend 15 min here and see if there is a way to repair the file.. but I have no high hopes. I'll report back...

 

by: tocardxPosted on 2008-08-21 at 17:36:59ID: 22285501

Ok, no luck... however, I used a hex editor on the file, just to check and see if there is even data there...

There is... so that's a good sign...

However, PixRecovery didn't work...

Try RiteRecovery from this link http://www.officerecovery.com/riterecovery/index.htm

Try the demo... hopefully it will work for you... Let me know if it does, because if so, I might want to buy this program... ya know... just in case... Insurance is always nice.

 

by: Cosmo2bPosted on 2008-08-21 at 17:49:52ID: 22285547

Actually these files are about a year and a half old, and this person says they used to be able to view the files until he tried a malware removal. However, the date of the malware removal (last month) is inconsistent with the stamped "modified" date on all these files (June 15.) Can a malware removal do that? Or was this person mistaken about which files he may have been looking at?

 

by: Cosmo2bPosted on 2008-09-02 at 15:23:06ID: 22372291

Tocardx: I really appreciate your work on this. Just wondered if you could answer my last question so I can wrap this case up for my client. And maybe any last thoughts about what could have done this while they were on the hard drive- but only to _some_ of the picture files?

Thanks!

 

by: tocardxPosted on 2008-09-02 at 17:07:04ID: 22372939

A malware COULD corrupt files, but it is unlikely. The fact that the time stamp on the file shows that it was not modified by the malware removal makes it basically impossible.

Unfortunately, if it is not a corrupt CF2, or a virus... Then I really do not know what could have destroyed these files, especially if they were once readable, while on the hard drive of the machine.

The only things I can think of is some kind of encryption or compression software.

In my mind the MOST likely problem would be some kind of disk corruption. Meaning - bad sectors on a disk altered a file table. Flash Cards and much more so mini disks get handled a lot, and so it is much more likely for them to develop bad sectors that can corrupt data. However, hard drives are not immune to this, especially if the files were sitting on an older computer or hard drive. This would be an early warning sign that the Hard Drive itself might be failing.

Something like chkdsk could help with that, but I don't want to go recommending too much on that front, because that gets into hardware maintenance. Doing that sort of thing without any sort of training can result in damaging the entire computer.

Unfortunately, from where I am sitting, that is the best I can do. If they know how to do it, I would recommend that they scan the drive's health, or have someone that does know how to, to do that for them.

 

by: Cosmo2bPosted on 2008-09-03 at 05:22:08ID: 22376365

Wow. Thanks so much for the info!

For anyone else with similar issues: I helped him do a chkdsk before the malware removal and it came up clean.

This problem affected only 3 folders in one profile. All other pics in that profile and in others on the system were fine. After the help and info from these experts, I must conclude that it was an error in the device that took the images or stored the original images, or an error in moving them to the hard drive. I plan to recommend a data recovery speicialist that might help.

 

by: Cosmo2bPosted on 2008-09-08 at 18:45:04ID: 31485281

Excellent work on a particularly difficult file. I appreciate all your help. Even if the image was not recovered in the end, I am able to accurately explain the loss to the customer.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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