What program do you usually use to open photos, something like
Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

You can look and see if the Options of the File types are what you want.

With My Pictures folder open, go up to the taskbar Tools/ Folder Options/ File Types tab, scroll all the way down to JPE, JPEG, & JPG and look at the details for extensions and see if it opens with what you want.
While there you could click advanced, click the "open" to hilite and Set Defaults.

Thank you Randy but I tried what you said and it's set to open with Windows Picture and Fax viewer which is what I've always used. Any other ideas ??

click start> run> and type or copy and paste>

regsvr32 /i shimgvw.dll

into the run line, then ok.

I did it Randy and it says succeeded but changed nothing

You got me.
I'm assuming the photos are jpeg and that this happens on every picture.
If it was just one photo, then I'd think it was corrupted or a different file extension.
I only thing I can think of is open with, choose program, and put a check mark in always use the selected program to open this kind of file.
I'm stuck. I guess left click works on everything else.

Yes my photos are all jpeg and it happens with every picture so I guess i will have to right click and tell it to open with Windows picture and Fax Viewer everytime...
Thanks for trying

I wonder what would happen if you copied a few of the photos and pasted them into My Documents, would they open normally from My Documents or act the same.

Um, I might be way off here but........... You say you click on the photos, surely you need to double click to open them with the picture and fax viewer?

I always right click on mine then click 'Preview' at the top. Then if I want a slide show I hit F11 or hit the slideshow icon under the photo - 4th one in on my screen.

Owbist I know i can open them that way, it's just that i used to click twice on a picture to open it and that was it. Now i have to do it clicking right and then clicking on preview or open with...

And i copied and pasted in my documents but same thing happens.

An idle thought here, did you by chance recently do a maintenace which included running a registry cleaner utility? I recently tested one on my Vista system and following its use I received the same Windows response, albeit on a different action. I was required to do a System Restore to alleviate my concern.

As a side note, I am slightly concerned to your comment of "I have lots of pictures in MY PICTURES". As one who has had a couple of negative experiences in data loss; personal pictures and at-work text (God bless off-site storage), I hope you have all that is precious to you stored on an alternative storage source. We as users are only one virus or one HD crash away from total loss of on-board data.

DA

Another thing i tried to do is a system restore but my dell computer won't let me do it. Are all Dells like that ?

When system restore fails I have had
Launch System Restore work.
Start- Run - msconfig OK

I don't understand why you need to double click a picture
to open it. My pictures are always open when I go to
My Pictures. I use Thumbnails. The Folders have to
be double clicked to open.

I did use SPYBOT SEARCH AND DESTROY lately, could I have removed something that i needed ?

I'm inclined not to believe so. It sounds to more like a missing .dll or exe file.

DA

Might want to look in MyComputer, Tools, Folder Options, File Type(tab). Scroll down to .jpg and highlight it.
Should say 'Opens with windows Picture & Fax viewer.

Might click Advanced button there, then highlight 'open', click the 'Edit' button. It has several boxes with word and path strings. From top to bottom in mine, yours is prob same.
Action; open
Application Used to perform action;
rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen %1
check yes.. Use DDE
DDE Message; blank
Application; shimgvw
DDE App not running; blank
Topic; System