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When I right-click on my camera in This PC > Devices and Drives I have "Import pictures and videos" item among those showing up, which is my favourite picture import application (introduced in Windows 7 or even Vista and apparently still present in Windows 8.1):

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How do I get Windows 8.1 to automatically launch exactly that application whenever I connect my camera? There's no such item as "Import pictures and videos" in Control Panel > Autoplay next to my camera - only this new Windows 8.1 Metro application called "Import photos and videos (Photos)", which is a completely different application that I don't want:

enter image description here

Further research suggests the following is executed when desired application shown in the 1st screenshot is launched: "%SystemRoot%\system32\rundll32.exe" "%SystemDrive%\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer\photoAcq.dll",PhotoAndVideoAcquire

Is there a way to write it directly into the registry somewhere (unless there are better ways)?

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  • Thanks for the tip on the rundll32.exe command. I noticed on Windows 10 that it no longer showed the option for importing photos from a DVD and this got me where I wanted to go.
    – Holistic Developer
    Commented Dec 6, 2016 at 20:14
  • Good to hear it was useful. Btw I was hoping to get that precise CLI string from MS Customer Support but bizarrely something prevented them from disclosing it even when asked explicitly.
    – dandreye
    Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 17:49

1 Answer 1

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OK, here's a solution:

"Andreas says: December 9, 2013 at 3:43 am There is a simple solution to add the autoplay option to Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Just go to the new Start Menu (Windows key), then type ‘cmd’ and click on the first entry with the right mouse button and select ‘run as administrator’. After this type ‘cd “C:\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer”‘ (for 64-Bit System), press enter. After that type: ‘regsvr32 PhotoAcq.dll’, press enter and then ‘regsvr32 PhotoViewer.dll’ and enter again. After this procedure, you will be able to select the old photo import assistent (as in Windows 7) from the autoplay list."

(found further down in the comments here: https://ludwigkeck.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/windows-8-1-importing-photos/)

Tested in Windows 8.1 and 10, works perfectly well in both: I now have the "Import pictures and videos (Windows)" item among those available in AutoPlay pop-down menu next to my camera:

enter image description here

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