I delete .jpg/.jpeg document scans in "My Picures". All delete, but then copies get created to replace them. A pop up shows "cpying from My Pictures to My Pictures. New file names are assigned, but every attempt to delete creates more copies! I now have hundreds of copies, copies of copies, etc.!! Is there a way to prevent the creation of copies of the files I attempt to delete from the "My Pictures" folder? Thanks in advance, Serob48

how are you trying to delete the pictures. If you are trying to delete by using hot keys then you are going to create copies. another possibility is that you have some third party photo editing software that is protecting the files. In this case you will have to delete the copies from that program (links) first....as there are no copies to protect then the my pictures files can then be deleted The third possibility is that you have a virus or trojan that is creating the copies. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

I had that happen to me once. To delete your pictures, create a new folder and move the pictures you want to delete to this folder. Delete the Folder. I never did know what caused the problem, it just went away.

This seems wierd. i think you can try 1) Delete my picture folder and create a new my picture folder 2) Run spybot and avg.

THANKS TO ALL. WalMart Photo and also Kodak photo processing--available at nearly any supermarket, drug store, etc.--offer to put your photos on a CD along with developed prints. But, included with the CD images of your photos is proprietary photo/album management software. The photo/albun software seems to be pushed on the consumer to make it his primary photo management software program. These programs include a (re)ORDER PRINTS and/or ENLARGEMENTS function. The objective is to cause the consumer to keep using only THAT photo processing source and photo management program on his PC! Either the Walmart or the Kodak software MUST be loaded to even view the photos on the respective CD or to copy the images to your PC's hard drive. Without loading the proprietary software, you cannot view, edit or copy your photos! One or both of these 2 programs MAY have caused the trouble. One of you had this problem before and you did not mention any particular software that might have caused it. But, I do not recall this problem ever occuring prior to my laoding the Walmart and Kodak programs to get to the photos on the CDs. I loaded the WalMart program from a photo CD I bought on Saturday 26Jan. I could not figure out how to copy the images to my hard drive from WalMart's photo management program, so I Uninstalled the program that same day. I had not by that time noticed the replication of the images as I deleted them. Uninstalling the WalMart software was without any problem. I wanted to load photo images from 3 Kodak CDs on Sunday 27Jan. The Kodak CDs are 4 to 5 years old. So, the Kodak program embedded on them is perhaps an older version than what Kodak includes on their photo CDs now. I loaded the Kodak photo program to get to the photos on Sunday 27Jan. I am almost sure that I never saw this image duplication problem before that time. I suspect that the Kodak photo management software may have been the culprit--but, not 100% sure. I Unistalled Kodak's program late Sunday 27Jan just to get it off my system and keep the photo images only. Kodak's program did not want to uninstall. I saw the "Uninstalled from your system" pop-up, and the program disappeared from the appliation list in "Add/Remove Sotware" in Control Panel, but the Desktop shortcut did not go away. Kodak's program also still showed in the WinXP START menu's "All Programs" directory as if it were still on my hard drive. I nonetheless deleted Kodak's shortcut and program folders everywhere that I could see them. This was done on 27Jan. After this, I noticed for the first time the many duplicate images and their automatic re-creation as I tried to delete them. After getting your suggestions this morning 28Jan, I also deleted a program from ArcSoft called "Photobase3" that is my long-used scanning/photo album creation program. This software came with my Canon scanner--purchased about 2 years ago. So, all photo/image management software except WinXP's own "My Pictures" functions were now deleted from my system this morning. I then started deleting the unwanted image copies. STILL the auto-creation of copies of images I deleted from the "My Pictures" folder occured as before! SO, I then created a folder as "cboy" suggested. I moved all the hundreds of copied images into it. No copies of the images were auto-created as I moved the images to the new folder. I deleted the folder. This worked well. All the copied images are now gone at last!! Thanks "cboy" and also thanks to all for the suggestions. I now wonder if my registry has something in it from the hard to uninstall Kodak software? Time will tell. Thanks in advance, Serob48

ONE LAST OBSERVATION... When I was trying to delete images and got all the duplication/copies of those images, I was selecting the images by left-clicking the first of several, then holding down the CTRL key and left-clicking to select many at one time to then delete at once by using the DELETE icon (red "X" in the Tool bar at top of "My Pictures") or via right-click of mouse, then selection of Delete. When I created the new folder, as per "cboy", I click/dragged each individual image to the new folder. I decided to do that, rather than risk more duplicate images by (CTRL)/left-click selection. Maybe there is something about selection of many images at one time in "My Pictures" by left-click that triggers a duplication/copy function. Still, I had deleted photo images before by this method with no duplication problem. So, maybe it was the Kodak photo management software that was imbedded on the 4 to 5 year-old photo CDs. (???) Thanks in advance, Serob48

Serob48 You will fnd that the answer to your problem lies in how you handle the mouse in the situation you described above. The reason why you get copies is when you hold down the control key and mark a numbrr of pictures all it takes is to move the mouse fractionally while marking another picture and Windows will write all the pictures you have marked as copies in the same folder. I have seen this many times and it all stems from sloppy mouse work. It has nothing at all to do with how many pictures you have marked or any other installed software on your system. Hope this helps