very newbie totally confused by comamnd line stuff

[tim99]

Hi,
I have beeen scanning old family photos from way back, (using photoshop cs5 & saving the scanned images as tifs) and need a way of setting the dates created & modified to the 1900s - 1960s when the photos were taken, rather than 2013 when i have scanne them.   I have used flash renamer to do this ok, but although it shows the properties of the tiff with the correct dates, they show up as blank fields when you view the folder details in windows explorer. Therefore you can't click the column heading to sort by date.  annoying.

I have been looking for a tool which can change the dates of tiffs and happened upon this forum/group, but am very concerned that I have no ability with script or perl or command line controls, and therefore would like to ask these questions :

Is there a known limitation in windows explorer (xp-pro) which prevents "old" dates from being seen correctly ?

if so, flash renamer is working properly and win exp is broken.

If not, (and any of you can check by just opening a folder in win exp and seeing if you can see old dates you have entered, correctly)  Flash may not be working, and so does exiftool have a simpler interface than the command line you all seem to know & love, as it's quite intimidating to this newby.

thanks for any suggestions, hope I haven't upset anybody by posting in the wrong place - I know how that can irritate regulars !!

tim

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Tim,

I can't help with the Windows question, but there is a  GUI that gets around the command-line issue in Windows.  Follow the instructions in the GUI manual to get it running.

You can write dates back to the year 0 with ExifTool in any format where the dates are stored as strings (this includes EXIF, XMP and IPTC).

- Phil

[faj2323]

Hi Tim,

This might explain part of your problem:
http://www.programmersheaven.com/mb/windows/381566/381566/setfiletime--dos-filetime-limitations/

Basically, quoting from http://www.techrepublic.com/article/build-your-skills-learn-to-manipulate-file-time-stamps-in-windows/5034280 :

Time stamp date limitations
You generally can't set a time stamp to a date prior to Jan. 1, 1980, on a FAT or FAT32 partition, but you can set dates at least back to 1752 on NTFS formatted files (depending on the software you're using to change the dates).

[tim99]

thankyou so much - that explains it.  now I've found an excuse to update my pc !!
tim

[tim99]

damn. spoke too soon. My pc IS an NTFS system, and the modified old dates are clearly showing up correctly in the file properties, BUT they still don't show up in the date columns in windows explorer, or in the 'date picture taken' column.
Those columns remain stubbornly blank.
Any other ideas please ?
tim