Windows Photo Viewer Can’t Display Picture Not Enough Memory

The “Windows Photo Viewer can’t display this picture because there might not be enough memory available on your computer” issue is prevalent on different versions of Windows, like Windows 10 or 7.

This issue is not necessarily related to your PC being low on memory; it often happens when opening jpeg (or other image files) with an embedded ICC profile metadata. This happens, for example, with photos exported using Android apps from your phone.

Since Windows Photo Viewer cannot open images with an ICC profile, the easiest way to fix this issue is to install IrfanView, a superior image viewer, compared to Windows Photo Viewer, which can normally open image files with an ICC profile.

(To discover more amazing software to improve your Windows experience, check our list of must-have software for Windows.)

If you don’t want to try this third-party software, you can try the fix below, which works for many users.

Fix Windows Photo Viewer Can’t Display Picture by Changing Device Profile

This solution, which involves changing the device profile under color management, was proven effective for many users. It is easy to implement, so it is worth a try. Here is how to do it:

1. On Windows Search, input Color management and open the first result:
   
2. Go to the Advanced tab.
3. Change Device Profile to Agfa:Swop Standard:
   
4. Restart your PC.

If this solution does not work, remember to change your Device Profile to default.

(If your Windows Photo Viewer applies a yellow tint to your pictures, check the article I’ve written about it.)

You can also fix this issue by manually changing the metadata of your images, as shown below:

How to Manually Fix Windows Photo Viewer Can’t Display Picture Not Enough Memory

You can also manually fix this issue by replacing the ICC profile metadata on your images with Notepad++ as explained below:

1. Download Notepad++ and install it on your PC.
2. Right-click the image file you can’t open in Windows Photo Viewer and open the image with Notepad++.
3. Find ICC_PROFILE on the text and replace it with ICC_PROFILX:
   
   
4. Save the file to keep the original format.

The obvious drawback is that this fix requires you to edit every file that displays the error message. This can take up a lot of time if we are talking about many images.

If you want an automatic fix, keep reading.

How to Automatically Fix Windows Photo Viewer Can’t Display Picture

You can also automatize changing the ICC profile of your pictures so you can open them in Windows Photo Viewer. For this, we will use two programs: ImageMagick and Default Programs Editor.

Both programs are portable, so you won’t need to install anything on your PC.

Here is how to do it:

1. First, download ImageMagick and extract to C:\Apps\ImageMagick-7.1.0-portable-Q16-x64
   
   Create the folders Apps and ImageMagick-7.1.0-portable-Q16-x64 when needed.
2. Create a new text file under C:\Apps and open it with Notepad, then paste this inside Notepad to create a batch file:
   @echo off
C:\Apps\ImageMagick-7.1.0-portable-Q16-x64\convert.exe %1 -strip c:\temp\temp12345file.jpg
rundll32 "C:\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer\PhotoViewer.dll", ImageView_Fullscreen c:\temp\temp12345file.jpg
del c:\temp\temp12345file.jpg
   
3. Click on File > Save as and name the file as gfxopen.bat:
   
4. Download Default Programs Editor then extract it to C:\Apps:
   
5. Run Default Programs Editor, and choose File Type Settings, then Context Menu:
   
   
6. Under Select an extension to change, select jpg then click on Next:
   
7. Click on Open under Command, then click on Add:
   
8. On Add a new context menu item, input the following:
   Command name: Open Fixed Image
   Program path: “C:\apps\gfxopen.bat” “%1”
   
9. Now select Open Fixed Image Set under Command, and click on Set selected command as default:
   
10. Finally, press Save Context Menu to apply the changes.

Now you should be able to open your images in Windows Photo Viewer normally.

Conclusion

The reason that Windows Photo Viewer can’t display certain pictures because “there might be not enough memory” is that these images have ICC profile embedded in it.

So far, Microsoft didn’t issue a fix to this, so I suggest you use IrfanView as your default image viewer, as it can open image files with an embedded ICC profile metadata on it.

You can fix this issue by changing the Device Profile under the Advanced tab on Color Management to Agfa:Swop Standard.

You can open these files by editing the image file with Notepad++ and manually replacing ICC_PROFILE for ICC_PROFILX, then saving the file. Or you can make this process automatic, as explained in the previous section of this article.

If you have missing borders in Windows Explorer, I’ve written an article on how to fix Windows Explorer border missing.