I’m using Windows 7, trying to transfer photos from my digital camera to my laptop for the second time, but the Import Pictures and Videos wizard won’t let me. After I connect my camera and choose ‘Import pictures and videos’ from the AutoPlay dialog box, I get a message from the Import Pictures and Videos wizard that ‘No new pictures or videos were found on this device’.

Although it would have been simple to just treat the camera as a mass storage device and browse the files in Explorer, I wanted to use the wizard to create a folder for each date. Why can’t we have a button to import the same images again and again, as many times as we want?

Disconnecting and reconnecting the device didn’t help, and deleting the picture files and the folders that contained them from my computer didn’t help, either. Obviously, something on the computer was keeping track of which images had been transferred. So, I started digging around and found this interesting hidden file in my user folder:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Photo Acquisition\PreviouslyAcquired.db

I renamed PreviouslyAcquired.db to PreviouslyAcquired.db.old, then reconnected the camera and went through the wizard again, where I was able to import the pictures a second time.

As noted in the comments below, in order to see the PreviouslyAcquired.db file, you first need to turn on Show hidden files, folders, and drives in Windows’ Folder Options dialog box. To do this, open Windows Explorer, click on Organize and choose Folder and search options to open the Folder Options dialog box. Choose the View tab, then choose the Show hidden files, folders, and drives radio button under Hidden files and folders.