Cannot Rotate Photos! Please Help

Anonymous
2009-12-06T02:15:54+00:00

I cannot rotate my photos.   I have most of my photos on external hard drives.  When I attempt to rotate them (by either right clicking, opening them in paint, or opening them in Windows Photo Viewer) Windows 7 will not let me rotate them.  Instead I get an error message stating that "you cannot rotate this image. The file might be in use or open in another program, or the file or folder might be read only."  I have tried giving my user account full access to the external drive, and I have also tried marking both the file, the folder, and the drive as readable.  It goes through and looks like it is doing something, but in the end, I always get the error message.  I can rotate them if they are on the C: drive, but my C: drive is too small to hold my photos collection..  Help!?!

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2010-01-08T23:58:11+00:00

I just installed Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and I couldn't rotate any of the pictures on my internal hard drives. After clicking around, I figured out what the problem was.

You need to:

  1. Click on the Start menu.
  2. Click on Computer.
  3. Right-click the drive that is giving you trouble.
  4. Select Properties.
  5. Click on the Security tab.
  6. Click on the Edit button where it says "To change permissions, click Edit."

7. In the "Group or user names" box, click on the user that you want to edit. On my computer, I had to select "Users (computer-name\Users)" at the bottom of the list.

  1. In the "Permissions for Users" box, click on the check box to Allow Full control.
  2. Click ok.

It may popup boxes telling you that it can't change the permissions on certain files. Just click ok to move on.

Repeat these steps on each drive that is giving you trouble.

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Anonymous
2009-12-07T00:29:01+00:00

Hi mjwrigh,

Welcome to Microsoft Answers Forum. I would suggest you to run check disk to see if there are any error on the external hard drive, the following are the steps to run check disk. 1.           Click Start, and then Run. 2.            In Open, type cmd, and then press ENTER. 3.            Use one of the following procedures:            A. To run Chkdsk in read-only mode, at the command prompt, type chkdsk, and then press ENTER.                                B. To repair errors without scanning the volume for bad sectors, at the command prompt, type chkdsk volume:/f, and then press ENTER.           C.  To repair errors, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information, at the command prompt, type chkdsk volume:/r, and then press ENTER By default, if a picture is read-only, you can't edit the picture or change its file properties. If you do want to make changes to this picture, you need to change the picture's read-only setting. Additional Information: Rotate a picture

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/search?q=rotate+picture&prd=

Why can't I edit a picture?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-vista/Why-cant-I-edit-a-picture

Hope this helps. Let us know the results.

Thanks & Regards,

Vijay – Microsoft Support ****Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-01-12T23:00:28+00:00

    God I had windows, I HATE WINDOWS I HATE WINDOWS.  I wish someone could come up with ANY kind of alternative than this horrid system.  Every time they change it it just gets worse and worse starting with Vista.

    why can they just leave a picture alone so that you can flip the bloody thing.  I have folders and folders of pictures, most of them in the libraries/pictures section and you can not change that.

    How the frig do you change it so that every bloody picture you put on your computer is NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT read only?

    God I hate windows.  Can someone tell me how you can store pictures in your library in the PICTURE section so you can flip them or do I have to start taking all my pictures horizontally and stop taking vertical pictures for teh rest of my life.  User friendly my backside.  GOD I HATE WINDOWS.

    ML

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-01-21T23:36:17+00:00

    In addition to what Purplepeanut suggested, which worked well by the way... thank you very much, is this:

    After clicking on the "edit" button just below the "Group or user names" box, a similar window opens. Click the catagory that's most appropriate as it pertains to your computer use. For my purposes, I selected "Users" and "Administrators". Then be sure to check the box just below and make certain all the boxes are checked off under "Allow". The last box I found to be uncheckable. After that, click on Ok. Windows will make the necessary changes. If you have a large external drive (like me) it may take a few minutes.

    Afterwards, I was able to then rotate and modify the images on my external hard drive with no error messages popping up.

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  3. Anonymous
    2009-12-30T17:30:58+00:00

    Hello mjwrigh,

    Thank you for visiting the Microsoft Answers site.

    In addition to Vijay's reply, if the issue persists, you may also try performing a clean boot to check if a background program may be interfering.

    To perform a clean boot, please see the link below:

    How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

    Thank you,

    Mary

    Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

    Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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