Missing Images in the UI as well as galaxies (includes splash screen, controls, images of galaxies) - windows only

Originally from ticket #15574.

Hi Dave,

I'm pleased to inform you that I have solved my problem with the missing graphics in SN7. To cut a long story short, I noticed that the graphics files in SN7 are mainly PNG and discovered they were not displaying properly on my Win 7 desktop PC. They should display as thumbnails in Windows Explorer but the only way I could view them was to open them in Adobe Photoshop. I found out from a Win 7 forum that there is some kind of conflict with Windows Live Essentials and PNG files which I have now fixed by installing an updated graphics codec pack. SN7 is now working perfectly!

To explain more fully, the problem I had with missing graphics in SN7 was caused by a corruption of PNG files in Windows. It may have happened after an update to a Windows Live Essentials component, i.e. Windows Live Photo Gallery, which messed up the way PNG files are handled in Windows. PNG files would no longer display as thumbnails in Windows Explorer and if you tried to open them in either Windows Live Photo Gallery or Windows Photo Viewer, the following error message would appear:

"Windows Photo Viewer can't open this picture because the file appears to be damaged, corrupted, or too large."

This, despite the fact that PNG files could still be opened with any other compatible program, like Adobe Photoshop. However, the only way to know for sure that there is a problem with PNG files is to open them in a native Windows image file viewer and see if the above error message is generated.

As SN7 relies heavily on PNG graphics, this is obviously a serious problem. One way to solve it is to install a third party graphics codec pack which somehow corrects the corruption of the PNG files. I chose FastPictureViewer Codec Pack (although it does not mention PNG in the list of image files it supports). Unfortunately it is not free but it is very useful for photography enthusiasts as it allows you to view Camera RAW files in Windows Explorer. Actually, I already had this program installed but it was an old version from 2010. Installing the latest version cured the PNG corruption. I got this tip from a Windows 7 forum.