Level: Intermediate
If you have been playing with Windows 7, you might have observed that animated GIF files does not play animations by default. On the contrary, GIF files will only play in Internet Explorer only. If you think that you set "Windows Photo Viewer" as the default program instead, it still wont work.Note: Some third-party tools like Irfanview claims to be able to do so.
To resolve this issue, you need to view the GIF file in the old Image viewer of Windows XP.
Thanks to corgano who rewrote the XP based "Windows Image and Fax Viewer" and made available to users like us. Download the tool from here and install it.
Once installed, set this tool as the default program to view gif images, as below.
1) Right click on any GIF image
2) Select Open with
3) Select Choose Default Program
4) Browse Windows Image and Fax Viewer
5) Save the settings
Once the default program is set, follow below steps.
1) Go to C:\Windows\gif\ and right click on rundll32.exe
2) Right click on it and select Properties
3) Go to Compatibility tab
4) From the list of OS versions, select Vista or Windows 7 and save it
You can now open any GIF file, and you will be able to see the animation, as you would in the above animated GIF.
