Windows Live Photo Gallery replacement

Hello LenMead,

I am in the same boat as well. I started with Digital Image Suite (WPG's precursor) and I too would like that my efforts to persist.

I have been running the latest Windows 10 and have not encountered any problems so far with WPG, but maybe I have been lucky.

WPG Corrupted Database/Index?

I do recall encountering a similar issue to the one you are having some time ago. It turned out that the WPG database got corrupted. There is a Microsoft KB article on how to reset it: Reset Windows Photo Gallery Database

The article is for an older version of Windows Photo Gallery, in the most recent version the database file is called Pictures.pd6

As much of the user added information (tags, captions, star ratings...) is written back to the photo files (except for flags, for example) you should not lose metadata. Still, ensure you have your photos backed up! The article's steps include renaming the old database file which is also a good way to rollback any changes to the db. 

Also, as WPG is tied to the Windows Indexing, try "Delete and re-building the index" option, or removing and adding the photo folders in the Windows Indexing Options. Here is a page which describes the Windows Indexing Options - https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-file-search-indexing-options/

Depending on your photo collection size, it may take some time to re-index the files. 

Plan B: Move to another photo manager

I have mentioned some other applications in this thread which may be a good substitute to WPG. I would recommend you try them out by creating a folder copy with a small sample of your photos and not with your entire photo collection. I have found that some do not interact in the same way with how WPG did in terms of metadata. For example, for People/Face Tags some applications opt for using the Metadata Working Group Face Regions schema and some others use the legacy IPTC geolocation fields instead of the newer ones as WPG does.

Somewhat more technical, I have written some blog posts to help folks better understand how WPG handles metadata and options to migrate the data.

1. Accessing Windows Photo Gallery Metadata using Exiftool

2. Converting and Exporting Windows Photo Gallery People Tags

3. Moving away from Windows Photo Gallery Geotags

If I ever find a good WPG substitute, I would surely write a blog post on it. For now, I continue to use WPG for tagging (People/Descriptive Tags) and general photo organization/search tasks and GeoSetter for Geotags.

Hello deerpark243,

Yeah, re-formatting and re-installing Windows is definitely the "nuclear option" which I dread turning to when I hit a wall when troubleshooting issues. Had to do it not long ago after a hardware change messed up my PC. I had no problems reinstalling Windows Photo Gallery on Windows 10. 

Blacked out panels in Windows sounds like a graphics driver issue. Check with the graphics card vendor drivers if there are any updates or reported issues. I recommend creating a Restore Point prior to driver changes.

Hope this helps!