Fix Found: Windows Photo Gallery Crashes or Fails to Save Edits on Windows 11 (2024–2026)

Work‑around discovered and documented by GerryG.​

Summary​

If Windows Photo Gallery (from Windows Essentials) crashes, shows errors like 0x8007000e or 0x86170104, or refuses to save edits on Windows 11, the issue is caused by conflicts between modern GPU scheduling and Photo Gallery’s old rendering engine.

The fix is to force Photo Gallery into a CPU‑only rendering path. This works on Win 11 for me. Not sure about Win 10; the path to this may be somewhat different.

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1. Open Settings → System → Display
2. Under Related settings, select Graphics
3. Under Default settings, click Advanced graphics settings
4. Turn Hardware‑accelerated GPU scheduling → Off
5. Back in the Graphics list, find Photo Gallery
6. Set its graphics preference to Power Saving (integrated GPU)
7. Close Settings
8. Reboot Windows
9. Reopen Photo Gallery and try the same edits

Result: Photo Gallery will now save edits normally and allow you to move from one image to the next without errors.

Optional Performance Note
If you’re not actively using Photo Gallery, you can turn Hardware‑accelerated GPU scheduling back On to restore maximum performance for gaming or GPU‑intensive apps.Photo Gallery will still run in CPU/integrated‑GPU mode because of the per‑app override.

Why This Works
Photo Gallery was built for 2009–2012 GPU architectures. Modern NVIDIA/AMD drivers and Windows’ GPU scheduling can break its old rendering pipeline. Forcing CPU‑only mode removes the incompatible GPU calls and stabilizes the app.

Notes
If this helps anyone else still using Photo Gallery on Windows 11, feel free to reply — happy to compare notes. Why Photo Gallery for editing? IMO, better editing tools than MSFT Photos plus ability to edit more metadata.