A user today was having problems loading a picture he copied from a camera to his Windows XP desktop, and Windows Picture and Fax Viewer was sitting at something like “Generating Preview…” for a minute or two, and locking up Windows Explorer. Oddly enough, pictures from “My Pictures” loaded without a problem. After what seemed to be a ridiculous amount of time troubleshooting camera settings, turns out the problem is not with the images, or the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer….. the culprit… (wait for it) … was a old shortcut to a dead network share on his desktop. As soon as I deleted the dead shortcut, the pictures loaded as normal.
Way to go Microsoft!