Hi, Cap. I'm a WinME orphan, too, & I'll try to help.
I've had no troubles with WinME in all the years I've used it. Of course, I run a ridiculously clean machine and it gets powered off when not in use.
The fact that you have those filetypes open in ACDSee by default is making my spider sense tingle a bit, but if it worked for you previously, it should work now. (The WinME default is Image Preview, at least here.)
Not to worry ... ACDSee is an old, old friend. Stable as a rock and an ancient but well debugged version. It plays very well with pretty much everything.
Let me get a stupid question out of the way: you're trying to add stills via "add image section" on the menu, right? Sorry, but I have to ask.
Yup. Also tried drag-and-drop, as I did in the old days with v2.02. Neither method was successful, with the same results.
Aside from ACDSee, do any of your other programs have trouble with jpg, gif etc.?
Nope. I've been pushing pixels in one form or another for just over 25 years, so trust me when I say that whenever I find a program that DOESN'T handle JPGs or GIFs perfectly, it's gone in a flash. All other programs I have on the machine that use these formats do so flawlessly.
Are there any graphic files that DO work in MQ?
Now you've gone and got me thinking, and it hurts my head. I created three test images, all at 720x480 px, all from the same master file : one JPG, one GIF and one PNG, all specified with no transparency (the GIF and PNG, anyway) at 24 bits of color. Lo and be-freakin-hold ! The JPG and GIF get the "Can't open the file" pop-up message, but the PNG drops onto the track as expected.
If you haven't already, take a look in Folder Options/File Types; examine the various actions listed for each type.
All clean as a whistle - one action, Open, set up as default to open in ACDsee.
I'd check the filetypes in the registry as well....open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT in Regedit & look for anomalies in each type's entries.
Also done ... very boring. Same number of keys (about three or four), all the same numerical values, file types are properly defined. Identical layout and key sets for JPG, GIF and PNG.
You also (hopefully) have the option of using System Restore to go back to a time when everything worked...you DO set restore points manually, don't you?
Um ... yeah. Yeah, of course. Sure.
Ok ... no. Honestly, Multiquence has been so dependable in the past and I considered it such a low screw-up risk that I didn't even think to set a restore point. Mind you, I DO set restore points if I have any doubts, but this time ... no. "My bad" as the kids would say.
So ... JPG and GIF are still out of commision, but PNG appears to be in working order. Of course, that's just "run program ... load image into track ... HEY, it's THERE like it's supposed to be". I'll have to see how things behave when I actually try to DO something !
Thank you so much for the assist ! If anything about why JPGs and GIFs might be failing to open springs to mind, please share !
TheCap