
How to Open .PVM files
Windows
Additional extension information
| File type: |
Miscellaneous |
| Popularity: |
Average |
| Author: |
Hewlett-Packard |
| MIME type: | Not specified |
Other .PVM file extensions
A .pvm is a photo album generated by Hewlett-Packard's Image Zone Plus software (since replaced by Photosmart), a tool bundled with various hardware such as digital cameras.
This file contains XML data for each image in the album. These albums are meant for burning to CD for viewing.
Your photos should be stored somewhere on your hard-drive, try viewing the HP Image Zone software options to see where they are currently being saved.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
I think you may find the problem is due to the .pvm format simply being a definition of the photo-album (which contains image names/order/size information etc). You will need the actual photos too to be able to view the collection.
Hope this helps :)
Is there any way to do this - even an outside service?
Thank you so much!
Do you still have the CD with HP Image Zone? Are you able to access/see the images with the .PVM extension?
I also just downloaded something called Uniblue Registry booster, but am reticent to purchase it since I'm not sure what the problem is.
There is some information when I view the files with Notepad, but it's like Greek to me.
If this doesn't work - send me a single PVM file via email (webmaster [at] dotwhat [dot] net) and I'll take a look.
Opening the files using Notepad won't help.
Thanks for the email. As I mentioned back in 2006 (see above - which I also forgot myself!) these .pvm files are simply text files that contain references to the locations of your images.
In your case, when this album was created the actual images were stored in the following folder:
C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/My Pictures/2008-12-20(Dec)-08/
The actual images are saved in the standard JPG format and were named something like IM000882.JPG
When you stored these files on your flash-drive, and reinstalled the Windows XP operating system the folder structure you had before was erased, hence why it can't find anything.
Now for the million-dollar question... did you back up the actual images (i.e. IM000882.JPG) or just the pvm files? *gulp*
At that time, I had downgraded my Vista to XP because of the problems. A few weeks ago I had to restore the system with Vista and am trying to make it work with everything. Then the (expletive deleted) old desktop crashed and I got a smaller drive on it from a friend. Then I reinstalled the HP software as I told you to try to retrieve the files.
If, as it may be, these are just descriptions of the photo albums - shells or something, I guess are they just describing the - aargh - former sizes of the files (because the files are of varying sizes)?
They don't define the album, they simply list the photos in each album and their location on your drive.
When you look at the contents of the flash-drive, do you see any files with the extension .JPG? If not, try a search over the flash drive for *.JPG and see what that gives you.
It sounds like you've copied across the small PVM file but not the images though, in which case you'll need to access the original machine and copy all the folders from C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/My Pictures/ and rebuild each album.
Thanks for all your help Jay. It's good to know that I've reached the end of the road on this - now I can get some work done.