Windows 8.1 Photos app does not show any photos, only videos

Anonymous
2014-02-17T22:09:31+00:00

The Photos app in Windows 8.1 does not display any of my photos.  The subfolders of my Pictures Library are shown but only the thumbnails for videos are shown.  The photos not seem to exist at all.  The pictures show fine in Explorer and Picasa.

Adding new photos to the library presents the same result, folders and videos show but not photos.

I have already tried all of the solutions given in this community with no success:

  • I already tried running the Modern App trouble shooter and it did not find any problems.
  • Indexing is enabled for my Pictures folder and the permissions for System are full access.
  • The app is up-to-date

Please help!

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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2014-09-04T09:15:44+00:00

Same issue App shows folders no photos.  I scrolled through all threads and tired all the suggestions about kind and regedit and reindex. Nothing worked UNTIL I renamed the folder containing the pictures. Viola!! The photo app displayed and opened the photos. All I did to rename was add an "x" to the folder name. A few weeks ago I did post this issue on the Libra community. The only reply I got was a snarky one from someone who seemed offended that I posed a question about compatibility of the app and Libre.  Hope this helps. I saw one other person in the thread fixed theirs the same way. It's easy enough to try.

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Anonymous
2014-03-08T01:00:57+00:00

For those users who see the Kind property marked as "document" instead of "picture", this is what is causing your pictures to not show up in the Photos app. To further investigate this, please answer the following:

  1. When did this start happening for you?
  2. Did this start happening after installing a certain app? What photo/document software have you installed on the computer? During installation, apps can change registry values.
  3. Did this start happening after upgrading to 8.1? After a fresh install of Windows? Did it occur after installing updates from Windows Update? The most likely case is that an app got installed that changes the Kind for these types of files.

To fix this, you could try uninstalling the app that was installed just before this behavior started. You could also try changing the Kind property for each filetype you own. To do that, perform the following:

  1. Launch the Registry Editor by launching search (Windows key + S) and typing in "regedit", and clicking the first result "regedit.exe".
  2. In the left navigation pane, navigate to the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\KindMap
  3. Find the filetype(s) your images are of in the right pane listing all known filetypes. 
  4. Right-click on the filetype and click Modify.
  5. In the Value data field, change the word "document" to "picture" (do not include quotation marks), then click OK. Repeat this process for any additional filetypes that aren't showing up.
  6. Close Registry Editor.
  7. Launch the Photos app and check to see if your photos are now appearing.

You may need to restore default libraries and rebuild the system index if you are still not seeing a change after performing the above steps. To restore default libraries:

  1. Launch File Explorer (Winkey+E).
  2. Click the View tab at the top of the window.
  3. Click the Navigation pane button and make sure the "Show libraries" option is selected.
  4. Below, in the Navigation pane, expand the Libraries tab.
  5. Right-click on the Pictures library and click Properties.
  6. Click the Restore Defaults button.
  7. Click Apply, then OK.

To rebuild the index:

  1. Launch search (Windows key + S) and type "Indexing Options", and choosing the first result.
  2. In the Indexing Options window, click the Advanced button.
  3. Click the Rebuild option.
  4. Let the computer run for a while without touching it while the index is rebuilt (interacting with your computer during this greatly slows it down).
  5. Launch the Photos app and check to see if your photos are now appearing.

Please let us know the answers to the earlier questions I asked so we can prevent other users

from hitting this problem, and let us know if the steps listed fix your problem!

-Adam

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-03-09T04:05:03+00:00

    Hi Adam,

    See my responses to your questions below.

    1. & 2. This is a new computer (Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro) and the problem started the first time I opened the Photo app, but I did install Google's Picasa 3 software prior to trying out the Photo app. I'm not sure if that caused the issue or if it was already present in Lenovo's image.
    2. Updates were installed prior to running the Photo app for the first time.

    Reindexing now, so I'm not sure if the issue is resolved, but I would assume so.

    -Nick

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-03-09T01:15:49+00:00
    1. Problem occured two or three days ago but maybe longer than that. I don't use photos app much since I never implement library system for my files. I just found it after I want to have live tile displaying little slideshow.
    2. At first I believe SageThumb cause the problem - it also interfere with thumbnail in SkyDrive and Photo apps and cause it to display very poor quality when open an image, like you expand thumbnail instead of display original bigger image. I disable its option to create thumbnail with normal photos like jpg and png, thumbnail is display properly (in SkyDrive) again but Photos app problem is not solved.
    3. No.

    Editing registry and rebuilding index works yesterday. While I have some struggle to have Photos app displays images from library that I set to included folder from another drive (not the same drive that install OS). with some copy/past, reset, and new folder to test will it show up anything or not I managed to make Photos app show new image, and update when I add new image to the folder that included in library. Live tile display my images and I just start to try to figure out why shuffle option only display about 7-8 images from 60+ in the same order over and over again, I open Photos app and found that everything gone. I have to reset library to default and add my folder to librry again to display my images from my folder.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-03-08T22:49:50+00:00
    1. This problem started immediately after receiving my new Lenovo Ideapad Y410p with Windows 8.1 installed.
    2. All of my documents and photos were migrated from a MacBook Pro running OSX10.8.  My photos were migrated using Picasa's backup tool.

    I modified the registry entries for jpg and jpeg, changing the kind from "document" to "picture".  Immediately, folder thumbnails for all of the directories and subdirectories of my pictures library appeared.  However, navigating into any folder did not show any individual photo thumbnails, if there were no subdirectories a message "There are no files or folders in this view" is displayed, just as before.

    I rebuilt the indexes and waited several hours.  Still no change to the Photos behavior.  We are getting somewhere but its still not working.  

    Very disappointing that it takes this much effort to get something as simple as a photo viewer to work.  I have tried to give the Windows 8 modern interface a chance but it just seem too flaky on a laptop to be worth my time.

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