14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that some Windows 7 users have come across glitches related to TIFF files, after they made the jump to the latest service pack for the operating system.
Microsoft confirmed the issues officially, and also provided affected customers with a fix, which is now available for download.
For the time being, a hotfix is all that the Microsoft Support has to offer, but it doesn’t look like a fully-fledged update will follow anytime soon.
According to the software giant, in specific scenarios, thumbnails for the TIFF image files can take very long to display in Windows Explorer.
Microsoft explains that Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) users can be affected by this problem, as can those with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. By the looks of it, Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM should not be impacted.
The problem only occurs when customers fire up Windows Explorer and open a folder which contains TIFF files.
TIFF is an acronym which stands for Tagged Image File Format, a specification used for digital images. Nowhere near as ubiquitous as JPEG, TIFF continues to be used by customers requiring better quality from their digital pictures than the format from the Joint Photographic Experts Group.
When viewed in Windows Explorer, thumbnails of TIFF images can display extremely slowly if the files are large in size, or if they’re stored on a network share, and accessed from a Windows 7 SP1 machines, Microsoft said.
The company is already providing customers with the KB 2619291 hotfix to resolve the issue. Of course, users will need to be running Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in order to deploy the fix.
KB 2619291 will make its way into Windows 7 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2, and then it will be released to all users, but for the time being, customers need to download and install it manually.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM Build 7601.17514.101119-1850 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM are available for download here.
Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.