Using Windows PhotoViewer on server 2016

[Emond Lo]

Hi there,

Firstly, apologize if I am posting at the wrong group.

Anyway, we have a Windows server 2016 RDS cluster with 3 servers. We have users who have the need to use Windows Photoviewer. The app works (after we enabling it as it was hidden by default on server 2016). But once users have an image file opened to view, they found that if they right-click on the image, the "Copy" option is greyed out.

It seems to happen to files stored on network shares as, if we move the file to a local disk on the server, the "Copy" option is available.

Been doing some Google search. Most results were talking about that read-only files will cause the problem but we are sure users all have read/write access and image files are not read-only.

I suspect it is some sort of SMB issues. Just wondering if anyone has come across this and wold know a solution or workaround please?

Thanks,

Edmond.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Photo viewer was a carry-over to windows 10 for those upgrades from windows 7/8.1 Even on windows 10 its been depreciated. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4027135/windows-10-photo-viewer

So it may stand to reason to see unexpected results especially when deploying to windows server.

[#3]

@Dave PatrickThanks for the reply. I think you are right about it. But your link may help with me resolving the issues. I can see Windows 10 comes with the Photos app (not Photoviewer). Windows 2016 doesn't even have it. I need to see if I can extract the package and install the Photos app on a server and see if it will behave differently.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Cheers.

Edmond.

[#4]

Sounds good, you're welcome.

(please don't forget to mark helpful replies)

[#5]

@Emond Lo Were you able to get this resolved? Would be very interested in what ended up working for you on server 2016. Thanks.

[#6]

I had the same problem and I found the solution on this site
https://www.dataone.nz/2022/06/20/enable-photo-viewer-on-windows-server-2016-2019-or-2022/