jpeg and e-mail

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glojo

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My sister uses Incredimail for sending and receiving e-mails. This program is very similar to Outlook and has been working perfectly for a number of years.

Yesterday I sent her a jpg picture and it refused to open. There is nothing wrong with the file and to test this, I posted the picture to myself. She then tried posting me a jpg and again the file was corrupt. (This was a completely different picture) She then went into Paint just to confirm the jpg file was viewable. I then sent her a link to a jpg and that opened perfectly.

As an experiment, this morning I renamed a jpg file to a random three letter file name, posted it to her and told her to replace the last three letters back to jpg. Again it is corrupt. I've gone through the very few settings in Incredimail and cannot find anything that stands out.

HELP.... please :)

I'm about to try a bmp file

Regards
John
 
I have just sent a bmp and gif file to her and both opened okee dokee

John

Edit
She can still view any of her jpg files and the problem only occurs in her e-mail program
 
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Might not be incredimail... do you have (or her) a very intrusive anti-virus? Try sending the file to a hotmail/gmail account and asking her to open the file from that account - see what happens.

Also, try asking her to send herself a jpg through incredimail - see what happens.

Also, try sending her a .txt file, see if that get corrupted.

The only other port of call I can think of is file permissions - but this (shouldn't) be too much of an issue under windows...

Michele

You were too fast for me :p

Ok, try to get her to send back one of the jpgs you sent her, can you open it? If not, open it with a hex editor (there are a few free ones out there) and post the first 5-or so lines; lets see whats happening to the headers.

For reference, here is what the first few bytes of a jpeg should look like:
"ÿØÿà..JFIF

Michele
 
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Hi Michele
Thanks very much for the helpful reply
Might not be incredimail... do you have (or her) a very intrusive anti-virus? Try sending the file to a hotmail/gmail account and asking her to open the file from that account - see what happens.
I'm not the brightest kid on the block, but my sister is even worse. She has not got a Hotmail or gmail account and it would be 'interesting' to talk her through opening one. (She's my elder sister which by definition puts her into the 'old' bracket :devil: :) and has only just started using a computer.

Also, try asking her to send herself a jpg through incredimail - see what happens.
:) Done that (see opening post;) ) Every type of file apart from jpg seems to be working fine. I've just sent a bmp and gif file, both can be previewed and opened in her Incredimail.

The only other port of call I can think of is file permissions - but this (shouldn't) be too much of an issue under windows....
Is that similar to file association? I asked her to try opening some of her many jpg files and all are opening perfectly. She has opened one, closed it and then tried to post that same file, it then goes corrupt.

She has posted me a file so I might have to try and get one of those editor thingies and post the lines :eek:

Thanks very much for the advice.

Regards
John the baffled
 
:) Done that (see opening post;) )
Sorry, didn't realise that! Let me just double-check:
-you've sent the file to yourself from your machine
-she's sent the file to herself from her machine
-she's sent you a file

and in all 3 cases, they open fine? Its only when you send her the file?

Secondly, when she opens the file from IncrediMail, does IncrediMail open it (sorry, I don't have any experience with this mail program and as such don't really know its capabilities) or does it try to open it in another program (e.g. paint, internet exploere, preview, windows picture viewer, etc)

Can she save the file to her desktop (or documents folder, etc), then right click and "Open With" a program like internet explorer?

Finally, not that it should make a difference, but when she opens other jpegs on her computer, are they jpg or jpeg? Is that the same type as the "corrupt" ones? (just trying to eliminate a file/program association problem)

Michele

oh, and for a free editor, HexEdit
http://expertcomsoft.com/
isn't bad - version 2.0 is free...

Michele
 
Sorry, didn't realise that! Let me just double-check:
-you've sent the file to yourself from your machine
-she's sent the file to herself from her machine
-she's sent you a file

and in all 3 cases, they open fine? Its only when you send her the file?
:) :) No

I sent her a jpg file that is ok

She receives it but it is corrupt and will not open

She can select one of her own jpg files that is in working order but if she tries to post it either to herself or me, then it gets corrupted.

The only time a jpg file gets corrupted is when it goes through her e-mail. She last sent me a working jpg on the 24th and when I sent her one yesterday the problem materialised. The file I sent her was fine, it opens properly on my computer and when I simply sent her a link, the file opened.

If I insert the jpg into the message body it will work, but if it goes as an attachment it will not.

I'll open the file with that editor and paste the first few lines.

Basically any jpg file that goes through her e-mail system as an attachment gets corrupted, whether it is being received or sent. Any jpg that is inserted into the text will work fine. Any other type of file, be it text, image, or zip will work perfectly.

Regards
John

Bye for now,
John

If she sends me the
 
John/Michele, can I suggest a rather lateral approach to this?

Ask them to download and install IrfanView from one of the many sites on the Internet and install this.

It is a tiny, free program that handles graphics but it has built into the installation a useful file that "mends" all of the associations on the PC for handling graphics files.

Whether or not it solves the issue it could then simply be uninstalled (although it is a very good graphics program for people who don't need the complexities of Photoshop).

It sounds very much as if either something new has been installed or one of those unadvertised Windows Updates has messed with the computer.
 
It sounds very much as if either something new has been installed or one of those unadvertised Windows Updates has messed with the computer.
I think your right.

This is the EXACT jpg I posted to my sister

GL.jpg


When I post this jpg to my sister it will not open, and when she sends this very same file back to me it fails to open. http://www.glojo.eclipse.co.uk/forumimages/GLduff.jpg

I have renamed the file GLduff just because it would have clashed with the original.

John
 
masqueraid: good idea

John, upon reading your updated description, I think its not an association problem. I think what might be happening is incredimail is trying to interpret the jpg, stripping the headers and trying to somehow append the jpg into the email itself (lots of mail programs do this so you don't need to "open" an external program to see the picture)

With some luck, the headers will shed some light...

Again, you were too fast! I gotta learn to refresh!

The headers seem to indicate that the file is in the JFIF format, but with an incorrect marker length - I'll see what else I can find...
 
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masqueraid: good idea

John, upon reading your updated description, I think its not an association problem. I think what might be happening is incredimail is trying to interpret the jpg, stripping the headers and trying to somehow append the jpg into the email itself (lots of mail programs do this so you don't need to "open" an external program to see the picture)

With some luck, the headers will shed some light...

Again, you were too fast! I gotta learn to refresh!

The headers seem to indicate that the file is in the JFIF format, but with an incorrect marker length - I'll see what else I can find...
I understand what your saying but Incredimail has NOT had any recent updates and up until the 24th Ocotober it was handling these files perfectly. Because of this I suggested she restore the computer to the 23rd October, but that has not solved the problem.

I have installed the program that Masqueraid has kindly suggested and have installed Incredimail, the problem though is that attachments don't show up in the program :mad: .

I think it fair to say I'm baffled and I think I'm going to suggest going into 'Add Remove Programs' uninstall Incredimail, then delete all the folders before re-installing it?

Regards
John
 
I had a further look - the headers seem quite intact...

its the EOF markers that seem to be missing/corrupt! The last markers on a jpeg/jfif should be:
Comment marker (FFFE)(the first two bytes, the length, after the marker indicate the number of bytes, including the two length bytes, that this header contains
whatever the user wants )
End of Image (EOI) marker (FFD9)(the very last marker )

I cant find either! Why this is, I can't really immagine - maybe the file didn't finish downloading?

I'm going to try manually adding them...
Michele
can't get the closing part closed well... look at the two file sizes:
353,271 bytes
353,256 bytes
you are missing the last 15 bytes of data...
While those can be reconstructed, the question is, WHY are they lost!?
 
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you are missing the last 15 bytes of data...
While those can be reconstructed, the question is, WHY are they lost!?
:devil: Crazy,
The file is okay at this end but from what your saying there is a little Lincolnshire poacher nicking them as they arrive at my sister's computer? Thieving little toe rags :)

I'm certainly impressed with your technical wizardry.

Regards
John
 
John,

Just a thought could you send the image compressed as a zip file - see if it gets through that way.

I know you won't make the file smaller, just change the format going through the tubes.

Mike
 
John,

Just a thought could you send the image compressed as a zip file - see if it gets through that way.

I know you won't make the file smaller, just change the format going through the tubes.

Mike
I must confess to having not tried that. I did cheat and tried attaching the file as gl.aaa and then told my sister to replace the aaa with jpg.

What baffles me is the fact that a) It was working two days ago

b) It is nicking just a few lines of coding.

As stated, my computer is working okay and still receives\sends these files. It is the one program on my sisters computer that is taking the mickey.

I will give your suggestion a try, but the problem will still be there for any of our relatives that send my sister a jpg file and of course this is quite a popular format.

Thanks very much for the suggestion.

John
 
Thought No. 2

John,

I wonder if the problem is with the ISP and the e-mail is just a smoke screen - I know a few people had trouble with attachments and Talk Talk - cured itself after a few days?

Mike
 
John,

I wonder if the problem is with the ISP and the e-mail is just a smoke screen - I know a few people had trouble with attachments and Talk Talk - cured itself after a few days?

Mike
Good point,
We are both with Eclipse. I try to keep our computers fairly similar just so we can usually resolve this type of issue. It's the first time she has managed to defeat me with a computer related problem.

Thanks
John
 

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