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I used to receive the full newsletter in my email. Now, it’s a pain in the mule to have to open my browser, sign in to a firewall, find my Windows Secrets passwords….

There are four old laptops and two old desktops in our household, all running XP with no problems. Obviously they won’t run Windows 8 (they are all over 7 years old). Even the cost of Windows 7 is more than each is worth.

It is totally immoral to expect users send perfectly serviceable equipment to landfill. I will keep my browsers and antivirus updated and stick with XP!

Red Chair Software is here: http://www.redchairsoftware.com/

IMHO Anapod Explorer is still the best app for the iPod. Foobar 2000 has an excellent plugin for the iPod (foo_dop) but AFAIK nothing for Creative players.

If you want to dig into this you can use a free tool such as Process Monitor to find out what is accessing your files.

I was thinking of Procmon. I suspect I will have to leave it running for a while…

I was wondering if someone knew the answer immediately – “Oh yes you have to turn off Windows Media Player share scanning” or something.

Thanks for the help.

JP, I have just looked at my pictures on my desktop, compared them with the entry in my laptop and the details as to dimensions and size are exactly the same even though the screen resolution is different.

Yes, the dimensions and size of the pictures themselves will always be the same. But there is additional data in those picture files called metadata which is not part of the actual picture. It holds information on (for example) exposures, apertures, camera name etc etc. Something is adding to the metadat in the file, increasing it’s size on disk.

How about running some tests on a new photo using HashTab, it may help find the cause of this apparent anomaly.

How will it help?

JP, I believe your question was answered here. The info stored by the system for the file actually changes the size of the file as it stores this info within the file while awaiting the slack time to adjust the date accessed info. and the size can change as the file stores its own statistics as part of the file for future reference.

Thanks for your continued help. I’m finding this hard to believe because:

1. It is only happening to my pictures. Why not all my other copied-over files? I have copied over .docs, .pubs, .htmls, .exes etc etc.

2. What would you expect to happen when these altered files are re-synchronised (copied back) to my NTFS desktop PC?

Whenever you copy a file (picture or whatever) the date shown after the file name in Explorer is the date that you copied the file, unless you have disabled the “last accessed” behavior of NTFS. If you have copied a bunch of files (photos) to your laptop, the date that you copied them will be the date shown for the file.

You are right but I am not looking at the “Accessed” column – I am looking at the “Modified” column, which should not change. And the file sizes have changed – extra EXIF data is being added to the JPEGs. Something is tweaking my files!

I’m not sure, but hope this helps.

Many thanks, but that’s not the problem because it is not the “Last Accessed” field which is changing.

It’s something hidden doing this.

I believe its standard practice for your laptop to modify the pictures info to the date they were transfered.

What does this and why?

I don’t think the size would be changed as PC’s resize them automatically to fit the monitor on which they are being viewed. What program do you use to view them. ?

That’s right, it is the size of the file that is being modified, not the size of the picture. A few bytes are being added to the EXIF data for each picture.

I haven’t viewed any of them yet. I will probably use Irfanview and Corel Photo Album.

That sounds like it may be attributed to the Windows Search database.

Windows Search doesn’t alter file dates or add to them, surely?

Thanks for your help.