Windows Live Movie Maker is not working with external hard drive.

Question

I recently took my laptop to a repair shop - as such, I backed up all my files and copied them to an external hard drive. With my sister's laptop, I was intending to work on a few videos with Windows Movie Maker with the files I transferred to the external hard drive (it has worked in the past).

However, now whenever I try to open these files from the external hard drive (literally ever single video), I get a message that says, "Sorry, Movie Maker can't open this project file. The file might not be compatible with Windows Live Movie Maker or be corrupted. Please select a different project file."

I should make it clear that all of the individual MP4 files still work via Windows Media Player. It's just that opening the actual Movie Maker is not working - not sure why the files are working and not the actual project itself.

Does anyone know how to fix this? Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I believe this is a problem with the file format between different versions of Windows Movie Maker. There is no reason related to a hard drive here. If the version installed on your sister's laptop is lower than the one used to initially create those files, then you'll receive that message.

Imagine the same goes for Word. DOC files can be opened in Office 2007 or later, but DOCX files are not available for Office 2003 unless you actually install a third party add-on provided by Microsoft.

Try installing the latest version available of Movie Maker and then open the files again. I believe it should work with the new version installed.

• Download page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14220/windows-movie-maker-download

Note: Click on Get It Now and then launch the streaming installer.