When I download photos from my digital camera into Windows 7 it automatically copies the photos into some mysterious location, rather than prompting me for the location to where I would like the photos stored. As a result I cannot seem to find the photos! When attempting to re-download the photos a second time a message appeared saying “No new photos detected” and does not allow me to re-download the photos. Previously with Windows XP I was able to tick the photos that I wished to download, and they were downloaded into the My Pictures folder, but it seems to be much more automated and confusing in Windows 7. How can I locate the existing downloaded photos and prevent this problem from occurring in the future?

It should be a fairly straight-forward process to download photos from a digital camera into Windows 7 (as they have actually made some improvements over previous versions of Windows) but if you are not familiar with the process, since you have come from a Windows XP background, it could be a bit confusing. So, to start I will provide an overview of the standard process for downloading photos from the camera to ensure that you are following the same procedure. Assuming that you are downloading the photos directly from the digital camera via USB, connect the USB cable to the camera and computer and then go into the mode on the camera which allows photos to be downloaded (usually this requires you to put the camera into photo viewing mode, so that the photos you have taken appear on the screen of the camera, which will also allow the photos to be downloaded via USB to the computer). Once the connection has been established, Windows 7 should show the “AutoPlay” window as it has detected a “Removable Disk” (in the case of Windows detecting your digital camera as simply an external memory card reader, which it essentially is, given that all your photos are located on the memory card). The AutoPlay window will ask what you would like to do. Click “Import pictures and videos using Windows”. Do not click “Import pictures and videos using Windows Live Photo Gallery” as that is something else. The “Import Pictures and Videos” window will appear and ask whether you would like to tag your photos – this assists in helping you identify your photos later. Click “Import” and Windows will proceed to download the photos from the camera onto your computer. Once the photos have finished importing, the folder containing your pictures should appear, although it seems that this has not happened in your case (otherwise you would know where the photos are located).

The picture and video import function within Windows 7 should download your photos into a folder within your “Pictures” library. This is accessible by going to the Start menu > “Pictures” or alternatively opening any other window showing the file system and clicking “Pictures” in the side-bar. You will notice that when I referred to the “Pictures” entity I called it a “library” rather than a “folder”. This is an important distinction which deserves some explanation. In Windows XP you had folders such as My Documents, My Pictures, and My Music to name a few. These are actual folders – concrete folders/directories within the file system in which you can store files, generally which relate to the name of the folder (it would make sense that you store pictures and photos within the My Pictures folder, and music within the My Music folder). Windows 7 does not use these types of folders anymore, but have instead replaced these with so-called libraries. A library does not actually store any files, but instead monitors the folders which do contain your files and presents them in one easy-to-find location. This means that if you have files (such as documents or photos) scattered across your computer or across multiple computers if you are running a home network, then you only need to look in one central location (e.g. the Documents or Pictures library) to access all of your relevant files. You can see this difference for yourself by going into the Pictures library. Within that library you should see many different folders, and if you right-click on any of the folders and select “Open folder location” it will take you to the actual location of the folder. Some may be located within your user folder, whereas others may be located in completely different locations. For example, the “Sample Pictures” folder is usually located at C:\Users\Public\Pictures since those sample pictures are shared amongst all users. However, regardless of the actual location where the photos are stored they should definitely appear within the Pictures library for ease of access.

If you are still unable to locate where the photos have been stored then we can figure this out by doing another import and looking at the settings. Take a few photos on the digital camera (so that it detects new photos are available) and follow the previous instructions to commence importing the photos. When you are prompted to tag the photos, click the “Import settings” link that will show all the import settings. Look at the location that has been set for “Import images to” and this will inform you about where the photos are actually being stored. Once you have that information, close the settings and cancel the import so that you can now go and find that location on your computer to retrieve the photos.

If you find that the tag pictures window does not appear then you could be in a strange situation which has been encountered by other users. In the Import Settings window there is an option to disable the window asking whether you would like to tag the photos. However, if you disable that window then you have no way to access the Import Settings as the link to the settings is only available on the photo tag window! As you can see, this is now a catch-22 situation where you need the window to access the settings, and to access the settings you need that window. The only way which I have found around this problem is to go into the Windows Registry and manually re-enable the photo tag window. Be aware, editing the Windows Registry is a potentially hazardous procedure and should only be done if you are confident in your ability. Proceed at your own risk. Assuming that you would like to continue, press CTRL + R to open the “Run” window and type “regedit” (without the quotes) and click OK. In the Registry Editor window that appears, navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Photo Acquisition\Camera and Portable Device. Once you are at this registry key in the right-hand pane you should see a value called “AcquisitionFlags”. Double-click to edit the data for this value and set it as “82” (without the quotes) and click OK. Close the Registry Editor and try importing the photos once again. You should now be presented with the window to tag the photos together with the “Import settings” link at the bottom of that window.

The above procedures should allow you to locate the existing photos which were downloaded from your camera. However, if you are really in difficulty and they downloaded to some completely strange location which (for one reason or another) you are not able to access then we can re-import the photos. As you mentioned in your question, Windows keeps track of which photos have already been downloaded from the digital camera as this means that when you connect the camera to the computer it will only download new photos, rather than downloading photos which have already been downloaded. The way that Windows does this is by maintaining a database file of all the photos that have been already downloaded and comparing these to the photos on the camera. In order to re-import or re-download the files from the camera we need to clear this database. You should be aware that this will clear the entire database, meaning that when you reconnect your camera all photos will be re-downloaded since (as far as the computer knows) none of those photos have been previously downloaded.

If you would like to proceed we need to go to the location of the photo database. Press CTRL + R to open the Run dialog box and type “C:\Users” (without the quotes). This will open the Users folder which contains all your user profile information. We need to enable the display of hidden files and folders plus file extensions so that we can see the database file. Press the ALT key to show the menu bar and go to the “Tools” menu > “Folder options”. In the Folder Options window click the “View” tab. Tick “Show hidden files and folders” and untick “Hide file extension for known file types”. Click OK to close and save the changes. You should now be back in the window showing the contents of the Users folder. Open the folder for your user name followed by App Data > Local > Microsoft > Photo Acquisition. Within the Photo Acquisition folder you should see a file named “PreviouslyAcquired.db”. As you can probably allude from the name and file extension, this is a database file containing a record of all the previously acquired photos. Usually to clear the database we would simply delete this file, but it is not a great idea to go deleting files if you can avoid it (just in case something goes horrifically wrong and you need to restore the file later). Therefore, I suggest that you just rename this file to something like “PreviouslyAcquired.db.old”. Once the file has been renamed I suggest that you go back to the “Tools” menu > “Folder Options” > “View” tab and re-hide hidden files and folders, and file extensions, just to make sure that you don’t accidentally delete or modify any such files in the future (as generally files are hidden for a purpose, because they are fairly important).

So that you are also aware, all the above procedures should also work the same if you take the memory card out of your camera and insert it into a memory card reader that is connected to your computer. As far as Windows is concerned there will be no difference, as it is likely just treating your digital camera as a (fairly expensive!) memory card reader when it connects to the computer via USB.