Invalid jpeg marker - Need help!!!

[sondregutt]

Hi
I have a big problem! All my photos (jpeg)are not possible to open anymore. Dosen't matter what software I use.... All I get is this error message "invalid jpeg marker" Do you know how to recover/open these images? Is there any software that recover jpeg files??
I can see most of the thumbnail in for example Windows Explorer. But I'm not able to "open" them

Also, all the photos used to be ok. After downloading them to the computer I was able to open all of them for months. But after I formated the computer (the C drive)(I removed all the photos to another disk first!)none of them are possible to look at... (I copyed them back to the same location where they used to be on the disk that i formated.

Please help!!

[byRo]

Hi, sondregutt, welcome to RetouchPRO.

Although I personally have been lucky (up to now) and never had this problem a quick "Google" will show that this is certainly not a rare occurrence.

Unfortunately, even thought the question has been asked many times I did not see one definite answer to the problem. Usually it is related to files that have been moved from one disk to another (as is your case here) or passed through some strange internet configuration.

Some things that appeared.....

1) Thumbnails are stored in a different place to the actual image, it is quite possible to see the thumbnail when the file is totally corrupted;

2) Maybe the extension has been changed. If it is a JPEG check to see that the actual .jpg extension is really there. Try "Open as...." in Photoshop with some other alternatives;

3) Try a different viewer. Seems that you've already done that, but a good suggestion, if you haven't tried yet, would be Irfanview;

4) The only time I've seen anybody report that the problem was solved was by using IE and browsing to the file and opening it through this;

5) There are some apps. that claim to be able to recover corrupted JPEG's and most have a free trial.

Hope somebody can help more....

Rô

[Kraellin]

the only instance i know of this occurring is when you get a wrong extension entered into the file. a 'wrong .jpg marker' usually means (to me) that the internal data header in the file is showing as .jpg, but the file extension showing on the file is something else... or, vice versa. if your files are showing with the .jpg extension, then the internal marker somehow got changed to something else or was lost.

every image file has a 'header'. that header basically tells how to reconstruct the image in a viewer. it will give things like width and length of the image, file type, rgb type and so on. viewers read this info and then reconstruct the image based on that. remember, we're working with digital here, so everything is 1's and 0's. the viewer has to interpret what all those 1's and 0's mean.

so, the solution shld be to either change the file extension or change the header information...or sometimes both. changing the file extension is easy. you simply rename the file with the proper extension. changing the header requires an editor of some sort, usually a hex editor or a simple binary text editor (one that reads the file exactly without adding control codes and other junk). you would also need to have an understanding of the header information and how to manipulate it.

one thing you might check before all that, however, is to see if you can open them from the disk you copied to rather than the files that are now back on your harddrive. see if you can insert your cd or disk into a drive and read them correctly there rather than from the harddrive. if that works, then you're in good shape.

another thing to check is the file sizes. are they showing 0 bytes or 1 byte or something very low like that or do they show much larger sizes that you would expect to see. if they are 0 bytes then the data is gone and you cant recover them from the disk.

another possible option, and this is a bit of a longshot, is there are programs that can recover files from a reformatted drive...sometimes. this will be dependent on several things, like if you did your quick reformat or a full reformat. if you only did a quick, then the chances are your files, or most of them are actually still on the drive but just not accessible in the normal manner. a quick reformat only changes the drive's header info but not the data. it basically says 'you dont need to bother with all the 1's and 0's after this new header point.'. and that leaves all the earlier 1's and 0's on the drive. there are programs that can recover this. they simply ignore the new header and look at the old 1's and 0's and reconstruct the old files. if you did a full reformat, i'm not sure if all this is possible, but it still might be worth a shot.

you might also try 'disk doctor'. i've had some success recovering things with that in the past, but that was on a win98 machine and not an NT machine.

so, good luck and let us know what you find out.

[Frank Lopes]

Post a couple of images to see if we can help you.

Originally Posted by sondregutt

Hi
I have a big problem! All my photos (jpeg)are not possible to open anymore. Dosen't matter what software I use.... All I get is this error message "invalid jpeg marker" Do you know how to recover/open these images? Is there any software that recover jpeg files??
I can see most of the thumbnail in for example Windows Explorer. But I'm not able to "open" them

Also, all the photos used to be ok. After downloading them to the computer I was able to open all of them for months. But after I formated the computer (the C drive)(I removed all the photos to another disk first!)none of them are possible to look at... (I copyed them back to the same location where they used to be on the disk that i formated.

Please help!!

[CJ Swartz]

NOTE:** I'm duplicating my answer to both threads started by the original poster so that they will be able to find this information -- moderator -- please put the two threads together -- there are separate posts on each thread.

Originally Posted by sondregutt

...All my photos (jpeg)are not possible to open anymore. Doesn't matter what software I use.... All I get is this error message "invalid jpeg marker" Do you know how to recover/open these images? Is there any software that recover jpeg files??
I can see most of the thumbnail in for example Windows Explorer. But I'm not able to "open" them

Also, all the photos used to be ok. After downloading them to the computer I was able to open all of them for months. But after I formated the computer (the C drive)(I removed all the photos to another disk first!)none of them are possible to look at... Please help!!

FIRST -- what about the original files you copied to a CD or hard drive -- can you open them? You have two copies of each file, right? The one now on your C: drive and the one that was copied before you formatted your drive.

I googled for some info and found this problem to be rather common, especially for images saved on CDs. It seems that there can be damage to the file even when the thumbnail opens up for you to see.

There is some rescue software (Photo Rescue) -- I'll look for some free stuff, but here is a link to a trial download -- you can see if it works on your images before you have to pay for it. Don't pay for it until we see if there is a free answer somewhere.
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/download.htm

Try to upload a problem image here, like Frank suggested -- it will be interesting to see if someone else can see it or not.

P.S. -- Free recovery software
Some free software to try that was recommended by forum members at DPreview -

Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery.htm or http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/sy...recovery.shtml

[sondregutt]

This is the original files... I only have one copy. I moved them from my c: drive, formated the C: drive and moved them back to the C: drive.. After I copied the back to the formated drive, none of them are ok anymore... The thumbnail are ok for about 50% of the pictures..... I'm not able to copy any file. I'm told the file size are too big.... "File Too Large. Limit for this filetype is 100.0 KB. Your file is 1.15 MB"

[byRo]

"File Too Large. Limit for this filetype is 100.0 KB. Your file is 1.15 MB" ??

Never seen this message before, what are you using?

Rô
(Duh me! Got it now )

[Jerryb]

hi,
retrouch has a limit of file size... and since your pictures are larger than 100k then that why it didn't accept... what you might want to do is maybe setup a account with photobucket.com and see if you can upload that file there and then post the link to the picture on the board.

As far as the file can't be open. in this case there can several reasons the header of the file is corrupted or there no proper ending of the file , or for some strange reasons your programs can't oen that version of jpeg, there a couple of different ones that i have run into from time to time... and what i do there i use my gwspro to open and resave then i can use them in my other programs...

but i would like to get a hold of that file and see what I can do if anything..

Originally Posted by sondregutt

This is the original files... I only have one copy. I moved them from my c: drive, formated the C: drive and moved them back to the C: drive.. After I copied the back to the formated drive, none of them are ok anymore... The thumbnail are ok for about 50% of the pictures..... I'm not able to copy any file. I'm told the file size are too big.... "File Too Large. Limit for this filetype is 100.0 KB. Your file is 1.15 MB"

[Frank Lopes]

What is "gwspro"?

Originally Posted by Jerryb

hi,
retrouch has a limit of file size... and since your pictures are larger than 100k then that why it didn't accept... what you might want to do is maybe setup a account with photobucket.com and see if you can upload that file there and then post the link to the picture on the board.

As far as the file can't be open. in this case there can several reasons the header of the file is corrupted or there no proper ending of the file , or for some strange reasons your programs can't oen that version of jpeg, there a couple of different ones that i have run into from time to time... and what i do there i use my gwspro to open and resave then i can use them in my other programs...

but i would like to get a hold of that file and see what I can do if anything..

[sondregutt]

Hi,
Ok, I have uploaded two pictures. Please download, and see if you are able to fix them..... I have tride to open them i 4-5 different programs but without any luck..

The link are:
http://www.turritt.com/temp.html

Right click on the pictures1 and two, and select "save target as"

Good luck!

[Jerryb]

hi,
gwspro (grapicworkshop pro)
It's similar to erfanview only better in my opinion.. very highly rated, it's a graphicviewer/conversion program... which I also use as a file manager. it has a ton of bells and whistles... when it comes to graphic viewing it's very forgiving on the format of the graphics for example it can handle a lot of the different flavors with tiff and jpg ... in addition... when there a doubt about what the format of a graphic is it has feature that actually looks inside to determine what file is and then save the file in it proper format...

for more info on what it does and screen shots go to alchemymindworks.com

you may want to download the demo and see if it usefull for what you...

Originally Posted by Frank Lopes

What is "gwspro"?

[Littlecoo]

Graphics programs like Photoshop can be a bit touchy if even so much as a single bit of file data is amiss. Have you tried to open with something like Internet Explorer? In contrast IE is very forgiving of suspect files.

[Littlecoo]

Hmmm...well IE will open them at least. I s'pose you could open and save copies of them all in IE and then see what you can salvage from there. Geez... I am cringing for ya mate...ouch! What a shame

[Littlecoo]

And my copy of PhotoshopCS2 seems to be somewhat obliging with your jpegs as well. I'm not doing much today so I'll see if I can have any more joy with your images... ya never know...

[simonlee]

Hi
I have this problem sometimes during the course of my work. Normally when images have been copied to a cd or dvd then back onto the system. We use apple macs and we get this same error on the odd image, photoshop won't open it by any method. The way we get round it is to open it in "preview" (part of OSX) then save it back down on the desktop. this seems to work.

[fenton]

I have teh exact same problem and tried all of the above... I lost 700 pictures of my family since the spring... If anyone can help I would be very much appreciative. My memory card that had the originals completely crashed after i took the pics off, now it wont even reformat in the camera.

[Jerryb]

hi Fenton,
you might want to look at this freeware program it designed to look into various memory sticks and recover certain graphic file formats....
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery.htm

this link does address memory sticks but it put more enphases on hard drive and cdroms... http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Originally Posted by fenton

I have teh exact same problem and tried all of the above... I lost 700 pictures of my family since the spring... If anyone can help I would be very much appreciative. My memory card that had the originals completely crashed after i took the pics off, now it wont even reformat in the camera.

[plugsnpixels]

I work in high ed and occassionally see students with this problem. No telling what combo of cameras/cards and home computers they use before they get to our Macs.

I had a bad time with the error as well when I would regularly optimize the external FireWire drive I have images stored on (I also have CD backups; I use the FW for organizing and easy access). I stopped doing the optimizations of that volume and haven't seen the problem since. I think it has something to do with the image header getting chopped or scrambled. If you can access that info and repair it (somehow?), perhaps it would work.

Also on the Mac, I have seen GraphicConverter open parts of corrupt images that PS wouldn't touch.

[cincolour]

The same problem here. Before I reinstalled the windows xp, I copied all my photos to a cd and to a pen driver, however I didnt copy the Thumbs.db files. Im not sure if that is the reason, but since then NEARLY ALL PHOTOS (JPG AND RAW FILES - NEF AND CRW) got corrupted. I´ve tried to open them on the computers from work (Windows and Mac) I´ve tried recover file software, many graphic preview software – without success. Photoshop wont recognise any of the files. The windows and Fax Preview says there is no preview available. The file size is over 1MB (average) but the dimensions are 0x0. The photos saved onto my computer after the reinstallation are fine. If anyone knows how to recover my photos please let me know.

Many thanks,

[kakkeriharsha]

Hi Folks,

I just now found a solution for this with my colleague (tulsi). Only 2 steps will solve this problem.

Step1: Just right click on image and open with firefox

Stpe2: when the image open in browser, just save as png.

PROBLEM SOLVED

Say bye bye to Invalid Jpeg marker, have a great day.

Harsha.Gopal.Kakkeri
Designer

[cincolour]

It doesnt work for me. I was told the header info of the image got corrupted. Not sure how to solve this. I still try different things sometime.

[mistermonday]

cincolour, it would help if you posted a link to a couple of sample files.
Regards, Murray

[sampatrik]

Hello Everyone,

I have gone through discussion as well as photos which are posted for example. It is clear that these photos are corrupted and need to repair. It happen with most of the users when they move Images from one disk to other, some of files, documents and images get corrupt. In your case use any repairing software (Stellar Phoenix JPEG repair) for JPEG to get back your jpg images.