Unable to open bitmaps (.bmp)

[RACKnRAIL]

I recently installed windows 7 about a month ago. It's been running like a top without any problems until now. The problem is opening my pictures. It was set by default to open all picture files with IE8, so I right-clicked on the .jpg and selected "open with" and gave windows picture viewer permanent permission, which worked for .jpeg files. So then I try to open a .gif and the same thing happens, except my only choice to open gif file was paint. I installed a program I've been using for years, L-View Pro. So it now opens my .gif files. So the problem is now I'm stumped on what to open my .bmp files with. I know the files are not corrupted and nothing I have installed will open them.

The error message I get is: "only 24,8,4, or 1 bit bitmaps are supported" and that's with whatever app I try to open them with.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

[Drew Wilson]

Does this issue occur with GiMP or Photoshop as well? It's a pain to open, but at least we can narrow the possibilities between an OS issue and a software issue. At this point, I'm leaning towards an OS issue because the software that comes with Windows should be able to open it. Even crappy IE should open them fine (though I've noticed picture formats tend to be touch and go when it comes to coding)

[RACKnRAIL]

Hey Drew...thx for replying. I've never used gimp, but oddly enough I decided to try it, and viola, it opens my bitmaps. However, other programs that should open .bmp files will not. I'm in the process of now saving my bitmaps using gimp to repair them. It's going to be time consuming, but it's that or nothing.

It's not a perfect solution, but it was helpful. Thank you.

[Drew Wilson]

Hooray! It worked! You're welcome.

If I had a guess as to what caused this then, its that Windows is using an updated version of all the software that reads bitmaps that, for whatever reason, isn't backwards compatible. By saving the BMP files in an effort to repair them, it's saving in a new version of BMP and allowing the Windows7 software to run it properly.

That's the only logical conclusion I can think of that would cause this problem (and allow the solution to work) though I don't know much about different versions of bitmap (not that I knew they really even existed or paid any attention to this o.O)

Yeah, Gimp is an excellent program for basic image manipulation (cropping, captioning, etc.) My only beef with it is that it takes a minute to load up (it's the same story with Photoshop though)