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When you open Control Panel – User Accounts – Change your picture, and click the Browse for more pictures… option, nothing may happen. The Common File Dialog is supposed to open when you click the option.
Also, when you click Pictures in the Start menu nothing may happen. The following tabs may be missing when you right-click Pictures in the Start menu and choose Properties:
- Location
- Previous Versions
- Customize
- Sharing
- Security
The above symptoms are observed when you relocate the Pictures folder to a removable hard drive, and then disconnect the drive later. Make sure that the drive is connected and the Pictures folder is accessible, in order to prevent this problem.
This may also happen if the Pictures folder for your user profile is pointing to an invalid location. To resolve the problem, inspect and fix the shell folders data for the Pictures folder in the registry. Follow these steps:
Fix the Pictures path in the registry
1. Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following location:
3. Backup the branch by exporting it to a file
4. Double-click My Pictures and set its data to %USERPROFILE%\Pictures
Important: Make sure that the Value type for My Pictures is REG_EXPAND_SZ (not REG_SZ), as you’re using an expandable string in the Value data. If it’s of type REG_SZ, delete the My Pictures value and recreate one of the correct type. To create a new value, click the Edit menu in the Registry Editor, select New and choose Expandable String Value. Name the newly created value as My Pictures, and assign the correct Value data.
5. Quit Registry Editor.
6. Logoff and login back for the changes to take effect.
Registry Fix
To reset the shell folder paths for Music, Documents, Pictures and Videos folders in Windows Vista, you may use the REG file reset_music_pictures_docs_path.reg. Download and save the file to the Desktop. Double-click on the file to merge the contents.
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