Photo Gallery and Windows 10

Hi Christine,

I too love Photo Gallery and have been using it for many years. Try downloading and installing it again (Windows 2012 Essentials). After it is installed, is listed under 'P' under 'all apps'. I have quite a few computers and most of them are updated to Windows 10. Photo Gallery appears to work fine with the exception of publishing to Facebook. I haven't tried other publishing.

One interesting trick that I use is importing to the 'One Drive' folder of my choice (With One Drive App Installed.) This way I can edit from multiple machines but still have the speed of editing locally. I can always move them to a more permanent storage down the line (Which I do) like a NAS or external drive. I always set my import folder name to 'Date Taken + Name' to eliminate any confusion or duplicates.

I Have Paint Shop pro and Photoshop, but drastically love Photo Gallery for simple editing and organization tasks.

Update: Until now I was not able to run Photo Gallery on Windows 10 64 bit (Swedish) at all.  I got this error trying to start, and Windows Live Photo Gallery was not responding:

Det gick inte att starta en DCOM-server: {00F30F64-AC33-42F5-8FD1-5DC2D3FDE06C}. Felet:

"740" inträffade när det här kommandot startades:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\WLXPhotoGallery.exe" /PhotoViewerComServer {00F30F64-AC33-42F5-8FD1-5DC2D3FDE06C} -Embedding

Approximate translation into English:

A DCOM server would not start: {00F30F64-AC33-42F5-8FD1-5DC2D3FDE06C}. The error:

"740" occurred when this command was run:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\WLXPhotoGallery.exe" /PhotoViewerComServer {00F30F64-AC33-42F5-8FD1-5DC2D3FDE06C} -Embedding

Trying to run Photo Gallery as administrator made no difference. The Gallery interface shows up, but reports "Not responding" after a few seconds, and you it does not react to mouse clicks or key strokes.

However, after entering Windows Update I noticed that there were updates waiting for a restart. Restarting the computer (be sure to select RESTART, not shut down) the update was installed, and new updates were availibale. An update to Win10 edition 1511 was installed (automatically restarting the computer three times – the update took about 15-20 minutes I think so it must be quite big).

After this I could start Windows Live Gallery 2012 32 bit. It's currently running on this Windows 10, 64 bit computer. Facial recognition and all!

Photo Gallery is currently processing all images, about 7000 images left and counting down towards 0. I believe it's extracting the face tags and putting them into its database.

I don't know how this is done, since it's still SQL Server 2005 that is installed as Photo Gallery's database engine, and that SQL Server version has not been supported for a long time. But as long as it works I guess I shouldn't complain.

It seems to put my current position as a geotag on every photo. I've never used geotags, so perhaps it does that with all photos that lack geotags. It's not good since many photos are taken on other places.

Update 2. After some hours all the people tags had been read, and all thumbails were said to be updated. Since many thumnails were still showing as grey boxes I restarted Photo Gallery, and it's "Not responding" It just says "Läser in" ("Loading..."), and the process in not responding. I restarted the computer. The same result.

It seems I can't get Photo Gallery to work with Windows 10, even if I thought so some hours ago. It was working fine directly after the upgrade to Win10 ver 1511 and while it was still updating people tags. But not at all now. Just as before.

Update 3:

I finally got Photo Gallery from Windows Essentials 12 to work on Windows 10!

A number of questions here on the English (Indian?) answers.microsoft site led to nowhere. The Microsoft personnel just asked me to reinstall again and again.

But asking the same question on the Swedish version of these pages, the support immediately led me to a solution:

The program was (by default?) set to Compatibility mode: "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)". On the Compatibility tab of the shortcut properties for Photo Gallery, I let Windows look for a better Compatibility mode, and Windows then changed the compatibility setting to "Windows 8". And what do you know... then it worked!

Here is a link to the Swedish page. Even if you don't know Swedish you will probably be able to "read" the pictures.

http://answers.microsoft.com/sv-se/windowslive/forum/gallery-wlinstall/photo-gallery-och-windows-10-st%C3%B6ds-inte-fullt/f825d8c0-72d3-412c-95bd-a5d1492afd0c

Just change compatibility to Windows 8 – perhaps compatibility mode isn't even needed, but obviously the Windows XP setting made it halt and fail to load.

(Another caveat can be that SQL Server 2005 CE was not installed when you installed Photo Gallery, but then you get another error. I had to download SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition manually and accept to install it despite warnings about it not being supported. But once it was installed I've seen no problems with it.)

Today, November 15th 2015, I followed the link above and Windows 10 is not one of the supported operating systems according to that page, or at least it doesn't say so. It says:

Windows Essentials 2012 - Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1

Windows 10 is not mentioned on that page.

I'm trying to install it, since I've been using face tags (people tags stored as XMP inside the images, by Photo Gallery) and have thousands of pictures with face tags, which are not supported by the simple photo viewer that was included in win10.

What you describe does not make sense to me.  Deleting Photo Gallery, or even its database, will not delete photos, since they are not stored on the program or in the database.

It is not possible to have 2 files with the same name in the same folder. 

It is not possible to "save a photo as photo gallery".  That expression is meaningless.  The photos are typically .jpg files in a disk directory, whether or not photo gallery exists on your system.  Photogallery lets you add tag information to photos and it provides a means to find, present and edit the photos.

It is no longer a problem now as all photos are deleted as well as Photo Gallery, Collections and Pictures. Help at Microsoft deleted Photo Gallery which deleted all other photos also. I was no longer able to download Windows Essentials 2012 as it was no longer supported. All my original photos were on backup discs but since they were saved as Photo Gallery, they are no longer readable. Yes all photo duplicates had the same name as the originals and all in the same folders. All photos were in Photo Gallery and also in Pictures. I don't know about Collections since it kept closing down on me. That computer became unusable. All photos are now in an older Dell with XP that is offline. I purchased a new HP with Windows 10 preinstalled on Sept 28. The preinstalled Windows 10 had different features and was not as easy to use as the downloaded Windows 10. ( Yesterday, Oct 16, McAfee said it would not protect Edge and replaced it with Internet Explorer.) The photo albums are designed for amateurs with small photo collections and minor touchup needs. I now only use my online computer for email, news and games. In a few months after Microsoft finishes debugging Windows 10, I will shop for a compatible professional photo app.