Originally posted by PDL Why are you blaming MS - why not find out what is going on with Arcsoft. Is it still loaded? Is it being identified as malware by your anti-virus? Was it a trial and the time ran out? Is PEF associated with Arcsoft or is it PPB?
Microsoft introduced WIC (Widows Image Components) in 2006 and that is how Vista is able to use the Pentax produced codec to view PEF thumbnails in the native file system. If you recall, XP was introduced in 2001, now why would you think that they would magically let WIC become enabled in a product that was 5 years old? I would take a hard look at your tool, there are other ones out there too.
In SP3 - WIC might be included, then you could view thumbnails. Other wise - get a new OS.
The Elitist - formerly known as PDL
the only way to associate a file with with a program is to tell windows to open that file with that program and I can't do that (tried it) because I'm not opening the pef file with the thumbnail viewer in the traditional sense, I think it may have been happening since updating the pentax software but if pentax don't provide a thumbnail viewer why should it. I bougth so crap old fuji camera and with its driver was automatically installed a component that allowed thumbnails to be viewed so why don't pentax do this, in windows I even get rthumbnails of PDF doc and open office docs so windows is integrating with some software why not others ? I mean hec this worked a little while ago why on earth did it just go wrong ?