.PVM File Extension

I have received an email photo attachment in pvm format. I cannot view it with my HP Image Zone software.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Hi Lee,

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 :)

I saved my HP photo albums to a flash drive and have changed computers. I reinstalled HP Image zone to an XP system, but I cannot retrieve the files (with .pvm extension) from the flash drive with HP Image Zone.

Is there any way to do this - even an outside service?

Thank you so much!

Hi Mary,

Do you still have the CD with HP Image Zone? Are you able to access/see the images with the .PVM extension?

Yes I reinstalled HP Image Zone Version 4.0 for windows XP. When I click on the .PVM files on drive E:(the removable flash drive), the Image Zone software comes up, but does not show the files. My windows Explorer, which will open other photo files, also will not open the .pvms, nor will Picassa or Windows Picture Manager that comes with Microsoft Office.

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.

Have you tried copying the files from the flash drive over to your main hard-drive (usually C:) first? Just a thought.

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.

Hi Mary,

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*

Well, Jay, I was visiting my family abroad over Christmas and I don't recall well. I believe what I did was copy files from Windows Explorer onto the flash drive. Maybe I missed some necessary step (BIG GROAN)?

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)?

The pvm files do not contain any image data at all, they're just text files used only by HP Image Zone.

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.

I guess that's that with the photos because the drive died on my old computer and I had to restore my new computer. Well - at least some got printed! Also, I emailed a few and may be able to get them back.

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.

I found a bunch of .pvm files also and I used Notepad to open one. I was able to find out the name, directory location, and date of the picture which was useful in verifying that I still had the original picture the .pvm file was mapping to. If that helps.

The .pvm files I have are on a flash drive - they were a backup from a disk drive that has crashed and are now (sigh) irretrievable. Thanks for the effort, Charlie, very appreciated.

I found an old flash drive in my basement that has a .pvm file on it, and I desperately want to see what the contents of it are! However, I switched from HP to a Mac and I don't know if it will be possible for me to ever see them unless I find an HP to upload them to?

I want to upload old photos to FaceBook for my family to view. My scanner uploads with the .PVM extension which FaceBook doesn't recognise. How do I convert from .PVM to .JPG?