After I found my pictures missing from my HD I did a system restore and the pictures reappeared. Unfortunately neither Windows viewer nor any other program can display the pictures now. The programs say that the file format is invalid, no preview is possible and/or the access was denied. However, if I use a recovery program, in this case Pandora, it shows the pictures as not deleted and can produce a preview of the pictures. Note, the pictures were not in the recycle bin when I looked for them. Any suggestions please?

What did you mean by "I did a system restore" ? Was this a Winxp restore or a Recovery disk from manufacturer? If Pandora found them where were they located? Did you try moving or copying them to a different folder? More details would help. Never say Never Romeo Void Firefox 3.0.3 A Safer Browser Thunderbird 2.0.0.16

I did a "system restore" and the folder was recovered. No disc or anything. The folder was exactly where the pictures were supposed to be but they are now unreadable except for pandora which can show a preview of the pictures but cannot save or restore them. I hope this helps. I'll try the copying of the pics next. Thanks so far.

kptb, It won't hurt to try the Free "imgeditor.zip" utility at the link below. Repair image file type associations in Windows XP http://windowsxp.mvps.org/imgassofi... Tufenuf

I do not think that the association is broken, since pictures in a different folder work fine. Also, while trying to copy an error occurred. The access was denied. It said that either the file was used (which it was not) or the disk was full (which it is not either).

Tried rebooting?