FIX: Photo Gallery Has Stopped Working

Windows Photo Gallery (previously known to the world as Windows Live Photo Gallery) is an image organizer, image editor, image viewer and image sharing application created by Microsoft and intended for use with its range of Windows Operating Systems. Windows Photo Gallery comes with the Windows Essentials software suite and is one of the best programs of its kind out there.

Many Windows users actually prefer Windows Photo Gallery over the more professional (and substantially pricier) applications of its persuasion that are available as options to Windows users. There is just something about the simplicity and ease of use that Windows Photo Gallery brings to the table that the more professional image organizing and editing applications out there just can’t dish out. However, that, in no way, means that Windows Photo Gallery is perfect. Windows Photo Gallery users can run into any of dozens of bumps and issues, one of which is the “Photo Gallery has stopped working” error.

Users affected by this error see that Windows Photo Gallery does not start up like it is supposed to no matter how many times they try to launch it, and every time they try to launch it, they receive an error message stating that “Photo Gallery has stopped working”. Users affected by this issue are more than capable of viewing images that have been associated with Windows Photo Gallery and even editing them, but they receive the “Photo Gallery has stopped working” error message every single time they try to launch the program.

If you are using Windows Photo Gallery on Windows 10, there is a good chance that installing all available Windows updates will resolve this issue and get rid of the “Photo Gallery has stopped working” error message for you.

However, if that does not work for you or if you are using Windows Photo Gallery on a different version of the Windows Operating System, here’s what you need to do in order to fix this problem and get the program to start up successfully.

Hold the Windows Key and Press X. Choose Control Panel and type File Explorer Options.

Click on the search result named Change search options for files and folders

Navigate to the View tab within the File Explorer Options dialog box.

Under Hidden files and folders in the Advanced settings section, click on Show hidden files and folders.

Click on Apply and then on OK and close the Folder Options dialog box.

Navigate to the following folder:

C:\Users\[Name of user]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery

Press Ctrl + A to select all of the files in this folder, press the Delete button on your keyboard and confirm the action in the resulting popup.

Restart your computer, and Windows Photo Gallery should start up successfully once you boot up.

As a preventative measure, you might want to copy all of the files in the Windows Photo Gallery folder to a safe location just in case something goes wrong and you need a backup of those files.

Once you have successfully resolved this problem, be sure to go back into Folder Options and disable the Show hidden files and folders option by selecting the Don’t show hidden files and folders option directly above it instead.