jpg files gone bad

Hi,
I have ~200 photos in a few folders that I can't open!
XP native picture viewer (or preview in explorer) will not display the picture and photshop gives this error:
"Could not open file because an unknown or invalid jpeg marker type is found"
I had not accessed these files in a few months. They have not been renamed or overwritten (re-saved) and their file sizes look fine.
I've copied them to a new PC and same problem.

Any ideas how I can resurrect these files? kind of scary!

First of all, where did the JPEG files come from? A Canon camera?

Did you view them earlier, and they were correct, or is this the first viewing and it failed? You said that this is the first viewing in months, but is it the first viewing of all?

---Bob Gross---

I have seen that error message before, but never from pictures I took.

My experience is that the files have been corrupted somehow.

Easiest step is to try Norton Systemworks. It does work since I was able to resurrect a days shooting when my battery went low and corrupted the CF.

Another possibility is getting help form a real computer geek and restoring the marker. Unoftunately depending on how those 1's and 0's got rearranged you may or may not have an image.

Best wishes on your recovery. (-:

-Pete

What did you open them with before ?

Try to open those files with IrfanView.

Yesterday my local newspaper suggested the trial versions of BadCopyPro www.jufsoft.com & ImageRecall www.flashfixers.com.
Maybe these will help.

thanks for the responses.
answers to your questions:
The files are mostly unmanipulated images from a 10D. Some are ones I had worked on in PS. And yes, all were viewed before and were fine, and some in the directory are still fine.
I've tried PS7 and the XP native viewer.
Of the programs that you have suggested, I tried the Badcopy Pro from justsoft and no help.
I think you are right about the files being corrupted, but how do I fix them? These few files I can live without, but it scares me about the 1000s of files and backup I've made since.

I certainly don't have any answers.

It would be possible that something in the XP file system screwed up, but I doubt that.

I think it is more logical that something in your PS editor screwed up, but I don't know for sure. If something got screwed up there, you might be able to still view it in the editor, but only when the original condition existed.

If might have been some user error, but I don't know what. If you had gotten PS into some really unique mode, it could have started there. Hard to say.

Chalk it up to bad luck. That is why you have backups of all of your RAW files. You can reconvert and re-edit and re-save.

---Bob Gross---

probably a bad sector on the drive. this happens a lot and this is the reason why you should run "scan disk" or "norton disk doctor" on your drives once a week, especially if you add/delete files all the time (like you do with a digital workstation).

I had a simmilar problem with my CF card out of 10D. one of the RAW files couldn't be copied (comp crashed) while all the other ones were OK. I ran norton disk doctor on the CF card and it worked.

The original poster stated: "Could not open file because an unknown or invalid jpeg marker type is found"

I could understand getting that kind of message once from a single disk error, but why would that affect multiple files the same way?

---Bob Gross---

yep.
I think I'll chaulk it up to bad luck and move on. Bad HD sounds right though. As I remember it, the HD did blue screen a couple of times. Scan disk came on at startup and everything *seemed* fine.
So let's see, I have backups on a 2nd HD on the PC, on a firewire external HD (the one with the problems, which I have since fdisked and reformatted) using the XP "suitcase" function and on a DVD (but this one is hard to keep current.
Still though, I'd sleep better knowing that files with these erros would be recoverable!
Thanks for the comments.
PP

Scandisk isn't always a good solution as it doesn't recognize all the errors. I suggest to go to your HD manufacturer website and download the diagnistic software from there - if there are any errors, they will be found.
But be careful to read the instructions - some tests may delete all your data. Good luck !

This might be a long shot but ... .are you sure they are jpegs and not RAW files ?? Remeber just cause it says .jpg at the end of the file doesnt mean it is a jpeg ... How big are they ?

You mean if a bunch of files got batch-renamed from .CRW to .JPG ?

That would explain a few things, but how in hell could that have happened?

---Bob Gross---

Mr. Murphy favored you with a visit?