If you are using Windows 10 operating system on your computer, you may find that it does not come with the ” Windows Photo Viewer program” as default to open image files. Instead, Windows 10 comes with a new modern (or subway) app called “ Photos ” which is now the default photo viewer in Windows 10.

Khôi phục "Windows Photo Viewer" về mặc định trong Windows 10

Although the new Photo Viewer app is a good-looking program and offers useful features and user interfaces, when the ‘Windows Photo Viewer’ is valid, its plan is not fast. Photo application takes some time to open an image or image file, which becomes quite annoying with time.

I never liked the modern subway or modern applications over traditional desktop programs. So I decided to set up “Windows Photo Viewer” with the default photo viewer in Windows 10.

When I checked in the new Settings app -> System -> Default Apps section, I couldn’t find “Windows Photo Viewer” in the list under the “ Photo viewer ” option. Only the application image and the Paint program are listed there. Microsoft has decided not to show useful old tools’ in the default app selection list.

I then went to the classic ” Set Default Programs ” window in Control Panel, hoping that I should set “Windows Photo Viewer” with the default photo viewer from that tool. But to my surprise, there are only two file types listed to associate with the “Windows Photo Viewer” program: TIF and TIFF. Once again, Microsoft has decided to remove all popular image file formats from the “Windows Photo Viewer” association screen so that no one can re-link “Windows Photo Viewer” as the default program to Open images in Windows 10.

In the end, I decided to manually change the default programs to open images by right-clicking on a . JPG file and choosing the option ” Open with. “ Again, “Windows Photo Viewer” is not present anywhere in the program list.

It seems that Microsoft has decided to altogether remove the “Windows Photo Viewer” program from Windows 10.

When I looked at my favorite Registry Editor program, I was able to find why the “Windows Photo Viewer” program wasn’t listed anywhere in Windows 10. Microsoft removed many keys. It is necessary out of the Registry that is responsible for displaying “Windows Photo Viewer” in “Open with”, “Default Apps” and “Set Default Programs” on the screen.

I opened the Windows 8.1 operating system on another machine. I found the necessary keys in Registry Editor, which were missing in Windows 10 OS. By adding the missing Registry keys for Windows 10, I could re-link the “ Windows Photo Viewer ”program with image files without any problem.

If you are also using Windows 10 and lack the program “Windows Photo Viewer” and want to set it as the default program to open image files in Windows 10, this guide will help you.

There are two different scenarios:

CASE 1:

If you upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10, you might be able to see “Windows Photo Viewer” in the “Open with”, “Default Apps” and “Set Default Programs” screen. It happens because the required Registry keys are not removed during the upgrade process. So if you upgrade your computer to Windows 10, you can probably set “Windows Photo Viewer” as the default program using the “Open with”, “Default Apps” or “Set Default Programs” screen. Figure.

CASE 2:

If you perform a fresh install of Windows 10, you won’t see the “Windows Photo Viewer” program anywhere, as mentioned at the start of this article.

Now you have three options to fix this problem:

OPTION 1:

You can use a 3rd party image viewer utility like IrfanView or XnView to replace the application image in Windows 10. Many people may have done this already. 

You can also use the “Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery ” program, which is quite similar to “Windows Photo Viewer”.

OPTION 2:

You can set MS Paint as the default image viewer using the Settings app -> System -> Default Apps page.

OPTION 3:

You can recover the “Windows Photo Viewer” program functionality in Windows 10 with the help of the following different methods:

  • Method 1: create a direct shortcut “Windows Photo Viewer”
  • Method 2: Add the option “Open With Windows Photo Viewer” in the Image File Context Menu
  • Method 3: Add the Program “Windows Photo Viewer” in the “Open With” List
  • Method 4: Combine all types of image files for the program “Windows Photo Viewer”

Note 1: Method 1 and Method 2 are constructive tips and can be used in other Windows versions.

Note 2: Methods 3 and 4 Method are troubleshooting methods and should be used in Windows only 10. Although you face the same file association problem as in In previous versions of Windows, you can use two methods to fix the problem.

We will start with the necessary methods to the advanced techniques. So without wasting time, let’s begin tutorials:

Method 1: create a direct shortcut “Windows Photo Viewer”

This is the most basic method! You can create a direct shortcut to launch the “Windows Photo Viewer” program.

“Windows Photo Viewer” does not come with any executable file (EXE). It runs Windows using a DLL file ” PhotoViewer.dll ” present in the ” C: Program Files Windows Photo Viewer ” folder. You cannot run programs that directly use DLL files, but you can help with the following commands to launch “Windows Photo Viewer” directly:

rundll32 “% ProgramFiles% Windows Photo Viewer PhotoViewer.dll”, ImageView_Fullscreen

Its commands are used everywhere in the Windows Registry to resolve the “Windows Photo Viewer” program executing.

You can create a new shortcut on the Desktop using the command mentioned above, and it will launch the program “Windows Photo Viewer” directly.

But the program will launch empty and won’t let you open any files. To fix this problem, you can add the full path of a particular image file or a folder containing your image files to the above command.

For example, if you have a folder “Wallpapers” in your E: drive containing all the image files that you regularly open, you can create a shortcut with the following command:

rundll32 “% ProgramFiles% Windows Photo Viewer PhotoViewer.dll”, ImageView_Fullscreen E: Wallpapers

The shortcut will open with the image files shown first in that folder and allow you to browse through all the reused image files and front buttons or use the arrow keys above. Your keyboard.

Also, when you open an image file using this command, Windows will automatically add “Windows Photo Viewer” in the “Open with” list, and then you can set it as the default for that filetype image.

Method 2: Add the option “Open With Windows Photo Viewer” in the Image File

You can also add a new option, “Open with Windows Photo Viewer” in the image files context menu. In other words, when you right-click on an image file, you will get a new option, “Open with Windows PhotoViewer” in the right-clicking menu. It will help you in quickly opening any image file with the program “Windows Photo Viewer”.

1. Press WIN + R keys together to open the RUN dialog box. You can also open it from the WIN + X menu. Now type regedit in the Run dialog box and press Enter. It will open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT SystemFileAssociations image shell

3. Create a new key under the key shell and name yourself any desired string like openwpv

4. In the right pane, double-click (Default) and change its value to Open With Windows Photo Viewer or any desired labels you want to see in the right-clicking menu.

5. Now create a new key under the key openwpv and name it command

6. In the right pane, double-click (Default) and change its value as follows:

% SystemRoot% System32 rundll32.exe “% ProgramFiles% Windows Photo Viewer PhotoViewer.dll”, ImageView_Fullscreen% 1

7. Now, create a newer key under the openwpv key and name it DropTarget

8. In the right window, create the new string CLSID and set its value to {FFE2A43C-56B9-4bf5-9A79-CC6D4285608A}

That’s it. You will now get a new “Open with Windows Photo Viewer” option in all menus and context images.

In the future, if you want to remove the selections, delete the main openwpv from the Registry.

PS: If you are not familiar with registry editing, we will also provide a registry script to do the automatic task for your convenience. Just download the following ZIP file, extract it and then run the REG file for adding or removing options from the context menu:

Registry Script Add “Open With Windows Photo Viewer” Option

Method 3: Add the Program “Windows Photo Viewer” in the list “Open With”

Now some of the advanced methods!

“Windows Photo Viewer” does not show up in the “Open with” program list because Microsoft has removed an essential ” Open ” key from the Registry that is responsible for displaying the programs in Open with the list.

We can re-add “Windows Photo Viewer” to the list “Open with” by adding Registry keys again:

1. Press WIN + R keys together to open the RUN dialog box. You can also open it from the WIN + X menu. Now type regedit in the Run dialog box and press Enter. It will open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT Applications photoviewer.dll shell

3. Create a new key under the key shell and set its name to Open

4. In the right window, create the new string MuiVerb and set its value to @ photoviewer.dll, -3043

5. Now create a new key under Open key and name it command

6. In the right pane, double-click (Default) and change its value as follows:

% SystemRoot% System32 rundll32.exe “% ProgramFiles% Windows Photo Viewer PhotoViewer.dll”, ImageView_Fullscreen% 1

7. Now create a new key under unlock key and name it DropTarget

8. In the right window, create the new string CLSID and set its value to {FFE2A43C-56B9-4bf5-9A79-CC6D4285608A}

That’s it. Now you will get the “Windows Photo Viewer” program in the “Open With” list, and then you can set it as default for that filetype image.

PS: If you are not familiar with registry editing, we will also provide a registry script to do the automatic task for your convenience. Just download the following ZIP file, unzip it and then run the given REG file:

Method 4: Combine all types of image files for the program “Windows Photo Viewer”

It’s the last method’s turn, which is the most advanced method and will bring the full functionality of the program “Windows Photo Viewer” in Windows 10, just like Windows 7/8 / 8.1.

When you try to set “Windows Photo Viewer” as the default program for image files using the classic ” Set Default Programs window” in Control Panel, it only shows two file types associated with the program. This: TIF and TIFF. Therefore, you cannot bind “Windows Photo Viewer” with other file types.

It happened because Microsoft very cleverly removed necessary keys from the “Windows Photo Viewer” file association capabilities in the Registry.

But we can bring the full functionality of “Windows Photo Viewer” again in Windows 10 by adding the keys in the Registry, and it will allow us to re-link “Windows Photo Viewer” to all of them. Image file formats are again the same as in previous Windows versions.

Adding all the Registry keys, you need manually will take a lot of time, which is why we are providing a ready-made Registry script to add keys automatically in the Registry. Just download the following ZIP file, unzip it and then run the given REG file:

Registry Script Restore “Windows Photo Viewer” Function in Windows 10

The Registry script will first add all the missing image file types like BMP, GIF, PNG, JPEG, etc. to the following Registry Editor key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer Capabilities FileAssociations

By default, the above Registry keys only contain .TIF and .TIFF strings. However, as you can see in the screenshot above, the Registry script has been added to other types of lost files.

The Registry script will then do the second part of this approach!

I have seen many more file formats missing in the above central mentioned values as Registry PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff, for all that, is not correct. They don’t know that they also need to add the remaining keys in the Registry like photo viewer.FileAssoc.Bitmap, PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Jpeg, PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Png, etc., to make them completely working. If we add the same PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff value to all strings, all image file formats will show an icon in Explorer, and we won’t be able to distinguish between BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, etc., file format. But if we followed correctly and added different values for all file types, all filetype images would show separate icons.

So the Registry script also adds other similar required keys to the Registry as follows:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Bitmap
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Gif
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.JFIF
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Jpeg
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Png
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Wdp

Once the Registry script adds the necessary keys, we will be able to see all the image file formats listed for “Windows Photo Viewer” on the ” Control Panel -> Default Programs -> Set Default Programs ” Page.

Just select ” Windows Photo Viewer ” and click on the ” Set this program as default ” button. Windows will now set “Windows Photo Viewer” as the default program for all image file formats.

You can recheck the list of file types by clicking the ” Choose defaults for this program ” button, and you will now see 12 image file formats listed, including BMP, GIF, PNG, JPEG, etc.

If you go to Settings app -> System -> Default Apps page, you will now see “Windows Photo Viewer” listed under the “ Photo viewer ” option.

Some Interesting Facts:

I found that in previous versions of Windows, although Microsoft has included GIF filetype under the “Windows Photo Viewer” file association capabilities in the Registry, Microsoft has not added the requests “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Gif “Is important in the Registry. That is why “Windows Photo Viewer” is never associated with GIF filetype if you try to set it by default like in the classic ” Set Default Programs window” in Control Panel. Whenever you click the ” Set this program as default ” button “, Windows Photo Viewer” plus 11 file formats always and never collaborates with GIF filetype. You can try and check it yourself in Windows 7/8 / 8.1.

To solve this problem, I added important “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Gif” requests with correct information in the Registry script, and you should be able to combine them “Windows Photo Viewer” with all types of file as GIF.

That’s all for now. Please share your feedback and suggestions in your comments.

Check also: