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Tutorial: My Memories Suite Error Resolved

Posted in My Memories Suite, Scrapbooking , on April 28, 2009 , 11 Comments

Let’s set the scene: You’ve recently added some new content that you’ve downloaded to the My Memories Suite program directories and you can’t wait to get in and make some fantastic new scrapbook pages with them.  You start up the software and rush in to browse in the new directory you’ve created where all the new content is stored. As soon as you do, an error message pops up. Something about a corrupted file. Annoyed, you click ‘OK’ and realize that you were able to “bypass” the error and still access the files after clicking ‘OK’, but the error keeps popping up and you have to click ‘OK’ for all of the errors before you can use anything in that directory. Every. Single. Time. Ouch.

Some of you have experienced this situation multiple times. And many of you have emailed me, asking about the error and how to fix it, or what was causing the problem. Was it the content you downloaded? The error used the term ‘corrupted’ in reference to a particular file as you were browsing content directories; was there a corrupted image file in your download? Rest assured, it’s not anything you’ve done wrong, and believe it or not, the actual image file in your download isn’t corrupted. (Which is why most of you realized you could just click “OK” and it would allow you access to those files.)

Thanks to a helpful Pink Toque Craft Blog reader, Cam, we now have a resolution straight from My Memories Suite customer service that fixes the problem.  And the answer is so simple I keep wondering why I never bothered to call them myself.

Apparently Windows Vista doesn’t like to play nice with My Memories Suite. (Wait, Vista isn’t 100% compatible with everything? NO WAI!) You know how when you go browsing for scrapbooking items such as backgrounds or embellishments within the software and you see various thumbnails there to choose from? The first time you browse new content to use within the software that My Memories Suite hasn’t accessed before, the program renders thumbnail versions of every single image file in the new directory when you browse in it right then and there — backgrounds, embellishemnts, etc. — so that when you are browsing your options you have a little preview thumbnail image of the items to choose from.  The error comes into play when you’ve added new content, go to browse it within MMS and you use Windows Vista, as Vista doesn’t like to render the thumbnails properly, hence the error message. The error is basically just letting you know that the thumbnail isn’t present and it can’t be rendered, but it forgets to mention that it’s all Vista’s fault.

The Solution?
I know you’re thinking, “Great, Lesley, but how do we FIX it?” Well, after adding new content to your My Memories Suite software, be it additional content you’ve created or you’ve downloaded from others, (See my tutorial on how to add additional content HERE) you need to right click on your shortcut to launch My Memories Suite and choose “Run as Administrator” from the popup menu. If you run MMS as an administrator and THEN go in and browse the new content you added, My Memories Suite will render the thumbnails properly. My Memories Suite only needs to render thumbnails once — the first time the program accesses the new stuff  — and then the thumbnails will always be there. So this is why right after adding new content you may get errors for certain embellishments. You will continue to get those errors every time you run My Memories Suite afterwards until those thumbnails are created properly.  Once the thumbnails are rendered, the errors will go away.

You will only need to run My Memories Suite as an administrator once after adding new content to your software directories.  If later on down the road you add more new content, be sure that the next time you run My Memories Suite that you run it as an administrator and then go browse to the new content so that the thumbnails for the new files are made correctly, and you’ll be good to go. If you ever run into the error while you’re working within the software, simply save what you’re working on, exit out of the program, and restart My Memories Suite, being sure to run it as an administrator. Then go back to the directory you were trying to access before and the errors should be gone.

The only part of this that still doesn’t make sense to me is how Vista decides which files it cannot render properly. Sometimes I get the error after adding new content but other times I don’t get any errors at all. Sometimes it’s not the entire contents of the new directory I’ve added, just a few select files among an entire folder of new stuff that produces the error. Previously I believed it affected files that were small in size or too small of a resolution to be used properly within MMS.  I was fairly regularly getting the error on tiny items or very thin ribbons, which tend to be a lot of pixels wide but only a few pixels tall and I thought that was the contributing factor.  Perhaps that is part of it; perhaps the reason Vista is having issues rendering these thumbnails has to do with file sizes, dimensions or resolutions. But the most important part to note is that it is not an error or problem with My Memories Suite; it is a Windows Vista problem.

Bottom line: If you’re getting errors about corrupted image files after adding new content, run My Memories Suite as an administrator (right click on your desktop/taskbar shortcut and choose “Run as Administrator” from the popup) and browse to the new directories to ensure thumbnails are rendered properly to alleviate errors. Special thanks to Cam for sharing this information with us :)

11 Responses to “Tutorial: My Memories Suite Error Resolved”

  1. KnitPurlGurl says:

    Left you an award on my KnitPurlGurl Blog. :)

  2. Michelle says:

    I am having the opposite problem! I have created an album, but when I go to upload it to the polaroid website, mymemorysuite is giving me an error message saying “in order to do this, you must connect to the web”. Well … I AM connected to the web, so why am I getting this error? I DO have windows vista (just fyi). Has anyone else experienced this? I just installed the software on thursday, and now saturday, I can’t get it to upload, so I can order a book.

    Help anyone? Thx.

  3. Lesley says:

    Hmm, I’ve not experienced this yet, but it seems a lot of the little “glitches” with My Memories Suite (when running Vista) have more to do with Vista not wanting to cooperate and play nice with My Memories Suite — are you running My Memories Suite as an administrator when you start it up? This may solve your problem. To do this, RIGHT-Click the icon/shortcut you use to launch My Memories Suite and choose “Run as Administrator” from the pop up menu that comes up. Then try to submit your photobook to Polaroid and see if it works. If this does not solve the problem, I’d give the customer service line a call and see if they know anything more about it. Best of luck, and let us know how it turns out!

  4. Marcia says:

    I must admit that I am a Mac gal and I have not had any problems at all. Perhaps the answer is to give up on your PCs all together and get a Mac the next time you need to upgrade to a new machine :) Good Luck! I wish I could be more help!

  5. Lesley says:

    Haha hey Marcia!

    This wouldn’t even be an issue if we all used Macs… or perhaps Linux? Hehe :) Oh well <3

  6. Kris says:

    Bless you! Bless you! Bless you! Thank you so much for putting so much good information in one easily accessible place!

    Oh, and I guess one way to make sure you don’t have this problem is to always run as administrator…right? Any down side to that??

  7. Lesley says:

    Oh and as far as always running as an administrator – shouldn’t be a problem :) You’d only really need to do it if you’ve added new content since the last time you ran it, but it won’t hurt to do it all the time. :)

  8. Katie says:

    Oh thank you so much for posting this! I have been getting this error but I run Windows XP. I thought it was something I was doing wrong (because I am guilty of rearranging the files to better suit my needs!). Thanks again!

  9. Wendy says:

    Windows 7 seems to do the same thing – I’m hoping the same fix works!

  10. Catherine says:

    The best way to fix this is to change the security permissions for the My Memories Suite folder so that the running user has full permissions on the directories within.