Changing The Way One Wishes To View One's Photos.

[anotheoldgit]

All my photos on my computer have now started to open in Windows Live Photo Gallery, when they once opened in Windows Picture & Fax Viewer.

How can I revert back please?

I am operating on Windows XP

If one needs to email a particular photo via Windows Photo Gallery can the recipient view one's whole picture gallery if they click on GO TO GALLERY on the top menu?

[Buenchico]

Last bit first:
If you send a picture via email it will simply appear as an attachment to that email. The recipient won't see anything else that you see whilst viewing it.

To change the program that you open any file type in, go to the location of a relevant file. (e.g. open your 'My Pictures' folder, or wherever else you store your images). RIGHT-click on a random image. Select 'Open With'. Put a tick against 'Always open files of this type with this program' and select the relevant program. (NB: It's a very long time since I last used XP but I seem to recall that you won't initially see that 'Always open . . . ' box. If you don't see it, instead of directly selecting a program, click on the option which lets you browse through programs instead. The box should then appear).

Having got all of that out of the way, I'll point out that I regard it as pure madness to use either of the Microsoft image-viewing programs that you've referred to. Irfanview is about a million billion zillion trillion squared times better than either of them!
http://www.irfanview.com/

[anotheoldgit]

Thank you once again Buenchico for your valuable knowledge that which you are prepared to pass on to the less Tech. knowledgeable amongst us.

I have now got them to open up in Windows Picture & Fax viewer once again.

Incidentally while they were opening in Windows Live Photo Gallery, I sent a picture as an attachment in an email addressed to myself, and I was indeed able to gain access to the whole of my picture gallery, through that email.

[Buenchico]

Thanks for your reply.

The 'access to the whole gallery' thing could only happen from someone else's computer if either:
(a) you'd somehow or other managed to send them the entire gallery anyway (which would seem to be impossible) ; or
(b) you'd given them permission to access files directly from your computer (which you can't do without specifically network your two computers together).

What seems to be happening is that, for some odd reason, a LOCAL link is getting included in your emails. For example, there's a picture of one of my cats located at C:\Users\user\Pictures\2015ToSort\Cats\P5221105.jpg on MY computer. If I paste that file path into MY browser's address bar (or otherwise tell MY computer to open the file at that address), I'll see the picture. However if you try to access that file on YOUR computer you won't be able to see it, because it will be trying to find it on YOUR C drive, rather than on mine (which it has no access to).

So the file path (to your picture gallery) which is getting included in your emails will work on YOUR computer (allowing you to see all of the pictures) but it WON'T work on the computers of the other people who're receiving you emails.

[Buenchico]

^^^ Typo in 2nd paragraph!

'network' should read 'networking'