Are pictures showing up as grey boxes when you open them on your PC? In this post from MiniTool, we will show you why your photos are greyed out on your computer hard drive, SD card, USB drive, etc., and how to fix grey photos on Windows 10/11.
“Photos showing up grey” is a common picture-related problem that is bothering lots of users. When they open the picture, they will find that the whole picture or part of the picture has turned gray. Here you can see a true example.
Photos have large gray boxes covering over half of the image. I have found this happens not just on Windows but also on my phone occasionally. I've always assumed it's a corrupt file but I just downloaded these images. They were fine yesterday, and now today EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM looks like this. I need these for class and I need to know what I can do to prevent this from happening or how to restore the images. Some I can't get duplicates of.
answers.microsoft.com
Are you suffering from the same issue? Now, let’s see why this problem happens.
Why Are My Pictures Greyed Out
Understand why the image is grayed out so you can take appropriate action and prevent it from happening again. Listed below are the common reasons for the matter of “pictures showing up as grey boxes”.
- File transfer or file download freezes cause picture problems, such as USB file transfer stuck at 0.
- The storage medium (such as a USB disk or SD card) is corrupted.
- The image format is RAW.
- The system file is corrupted.
- The picture is corrupted.
How to Fix Grey Photos on Windows
After knowing why your pictures are grayed out, next, try the solutions below to fix grey photos.
Fix 1. Retrieve Photos From Backup Files
If you have a backup of the pictures that appear as gray boxes, you can restore them from the backup file. Pictures in the backup file should remain in their original state. For instance, you can download your pictures from OneDrive or restore them from the data backup software.
Tip: Better safe than sorry. If you are looking for professional data backup software, you can use MiniTool ShadowMaker. It can help to back up photos easily.
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Fix 2. Open the Pictures With Photo Editing Software
Some users reported that they resolved the grey photos by opening them using photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop.
Step 1. In File Explorer, right-click your picture to select Open with > Adobe Photoshop.
Step 2. Check whether the picture is normal and then save it to another file location.
Step 3. Open the resaved picture and check if the “pictures showing up as grey boxes” issue has gone.
Fix 3. Repair Corrupted Pictures With Photo Repair Tool
When the pictures are corrupted or damaged, you need to use professional photo repair software to repair them. Among the numerous photo repair tools, Stellar Repair for Photo is the most recommended one. It supports repairing pictures with various image file formats including JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIFF, DNG, CR2, RAW, etc.
For more photo repair tools, you can refer to this article: Top 8 Free Photo Repair Software to Repair Damaged Photos.
Fix 4. Repair Corrupted Files With CMD
When your system file is corrupted, the pictures may be grayed out. In this case, you can run a SFC scan to detect and fix corrupted system files.
Step 1. Type cmd in the Windows search box. Right-click Command Prompt from the best match result to select Run as administrator.
Step 2. Click Yes in the UAC window. If you do not want to perform this step every time, you can disable UAC.
Step 3. In the command line window, type sfc /scannow and press Enter.
Step 4. Wait until the scan process finishes. Then open your picture and check if the grey box is still there.
Fix 5. Repair the Storage Device
As mentioned before, corrupted file storage devices can also cause your pictures to show as grey boxes. Running the CHKDSK command is the most commonly used way to repair storage devices. Follow the steps below to complete the necessary actions.
Step 1. Run Command Prompt as administrator.
Step 2. In the Command Prompt window, type chkdsk drive letter: /f /r and press Enter. Remember to replace the drive letter with the actual one. For example, you can input chkdsk E: /f /r.
Various ways can be used to repair storage devices, and you can get other ways from this article: How to Repair Hard Drive and Restore Data in Windows 10/8/7 Free.
Top Recommendation
Your pictures sometimes get lost due to multiple reasons. To recover deleted photos, you can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery, the best free data recovery software.
It is effective in missing Pictures folder recovery, lost or deleted Office document recovery, video restoration, email recovery, and so on.
Download its free edition and have a try.
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Alternatively, you can use MiniTool Photo Recovery, a tool dedicated to recovering photos, videos, and audio from almost all data storage devices.
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Wrapping Things Up
When facing the trouble of “pictures showing up as grey boxes”, you can try the methods listed above.
If you have found any other great solutions to this issue, welcome to leave them in the comment zone. Thanks in advance.
For further assistance with MiniTool software, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Shirley graduated from English major and is currently an editor of MiniTool Team. She likes browsing and writing IT-related articles, and is committed to becoming a professional IT problem solver. The topic of her articles are generally about data recovery, data backup, and computer disk management, as well as other IT issues. In spare time, she likes watching movies, hiking and fishing.
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