Help sought on using RESTORE. PSE 14 wINDOWS 8.1

Thank you for your post, Michel, it was encouraging and I'm badly in need of encouragement.

There have been some developments which have made me look again at my original tentative conclusions, but we'll come to that in a minute when I've dealt with your comments.

Firstly, I do not think file size is likely to be an issue. My methods have not changed and most of the images have been on the computer for a long time in their present format.

Secondly, opening the grey thumbnails in either the Organizer or Editor can be done in a fashion but they cannot be used. Any attempt to do so leads to everything seizing up and a long wait for the necessary courage to accumulate to enable the Start button to be stamped on and what passes for normality to resume. Even using normal thumbnails is a slow tedious exercise. Now to the developments.

1 Late yesterday I noticed all the 'torn-paper' thumbnails had gone. I think they have just morphed into 'question marks' or 'egg timers'. The numbers of the grey brigade seem to just as large as ever they were. When I last checked on one folder the proportions were 73 grey icons to 21 normal.

2 Then I had a look at Explorer to see if that would help. To my surprise all the thumbnails were normal and displayed lightening fast in IE.

3 So the problem seems to occur when they, or some of them, become active again in PSE 14? Or could my laptop be playing a part here?

4 I mention the laptop because over the past several months I've had various bits of trouble using it with PSE 11 and I blamed the latter. So much so that I switched to PSE 14 much earlier than I intended but here I am in an even bigger mess. My laptop is a Toshiba Qosmio well specified and trouble free, about 18 months old.

5 For various reasons I have been sidelined quite a bit over recent months and have got further out of touch with applications and computers so I should be very interested to receive your, and anyone else's, comments on the above. I really don't want to get involved in an uninstall/re-install exercise unless absolutely necessary.

Thank you for taking a look at this problem, sargenta1.

All of the big sample of folders containing TIFF's were examined in Windows Explorer and the thumbnails appeared normal, the comment about speed was an idle one really, prompted no doubt by the slowness experienced in other directions. The thumbnails also open very quickly in Windows Photoviewer.

The torn paper and question mark icons appear immediately I open a folder or an album.

Hopes this helps

Since PSE 14 is not working 100% as it should do, I'm still not sure whether I have finally and fully sorted out this problem of the grey thumbnails but at least I have got rid of them. I don't think the problem had a lot to do with moving files outside PSE because I've never done that and the numbers involved were very large.

Having tried, reconnect, repair etc etc I decided to go through the catalogue manually and Update the selected (grey) items. As all my files carry tags of either Tiff or JPEG plus the year they were taken as a minimum, it wasn't too difficult to control as the files beneath the grey icons responded to the keywords used.

Since then I have worked on the computer in the usual way without noticing any problems.

My reservations about what I have done, and its effect on the application generally, relate to the use of Backup. In a word, it is unusable. It completes all the preliminary work but when it gets to the 51-59% mark the computer locks up and I have to use an extended push on the stop/start button to restore its usability. This has happened countless times using new folders on several different EHDs. Initially, it twice said it was having trouble with two specific files, I deleted them from the computer and since then there hasn't been any messages except for the one saying the programme is not responding.

I am fast running short of options. Grasping at straws, I do have a vague recollection that a long time ago I had problems with thumbnails and the solution involved, I think, creating a new set of thumbnails for the whole catalog. It took a long time, I recall. Unfortunately I cannot find any notes I would have made at the time, nor can I trace anything on the forums/web/PSE handbooks etc. Does anyone out there have any knowledge of the procedure I think I recall? 

Here we go again!

Thank you for the suggestion, sargenta 1, but I'm very sorry to say it didn't work. 'Elements not responding' given as the reason.

Further research among my papers revealed the name 'thumb.5.cache' and reminded me of work done in the past. So I did what was required and set PSE up to create a new cache file. It took over seven hours for 23,000 files. At the end of that time, the whirling, undulating wheel just disappeared - no message of any sort.

Decided to see if I could create a backup but that failed at around the 53% mark, the same mark as all the other failed backups. This time I noticed the computer was busy in the F drive EHD, home of the catalog TIFFs which have been causing so much trouble, when the backup stopped.

To try something new, next I tried moving the TIFF files, which are held in one master folder: Phoenix, from F to another EHD H:, using drag and drop within PSE. Both drives are in PSE but PSE said the operation could not be completed.

However what I am left with is:

1 In PSE:

   in F drive, one Phoenix folder, with full hierarchical folder structure where the vast majority of the TIFF files display grey icons. Windows Explorer does not show the F drive.

   in H drive there is but one file awaiting removal from the catalog, nothing to do with the matter in hand.

2 In Explorer:

   No F drive.

   in H drive, one Phoenix folder containing the full folder structure and correct thumbnails in the folders to roughly the halfway point of the catalog, beyond that point they are completely empty.

What do I do now? is my plaintive cry.

Unless someone can come forward with some simple solution to my problem, I think the best thing to do is to cut my losses now by removing the F drive from the scene and renaming; creating another F drive on a new EHD and restoring the catalog from the November backup. Uninstalling/reinstalling necessary?