Images sometimes not showing up on websites (cached?)

[Bryan]

I have this very weird problem with images on websites that I've been trying
to ignore but It is just getting to be too annoying.

When I load up a website, sometimes some of the images don't load. But, if I
were to reload the page, or close my browser and revisit it later, the
images may (or still may not) load. Happens with gif files (may also be with
jpg). If I right-click the place where the image should be and click 'show
picture' it will show up. The images ARE in the cache (I checked) but fail
to show up for some reason. Something I have noticed about this issue is
that the images that fail to show up are usually (always?) images that are
shown multiple times on the same page. For example, buttons on forums (like
'quote' buttons or other such images that usually are shown many times).

I thought I might have a corrupted cache. so I created a simple .bat file to
completely remove my cache which I ran in safe mode. here it is:

RD /S /Q "C:\Documents and Settings\Bryan\Local Settings\Temporary Internet
Files"
RD /S /Q "C:\Documents and Settings\Bryan\Local Settings\HISTORY"
RD /S /Q "C:\Documents and Settings\Bryan\COOKIES"
RD /S /Q "C:\Documents and Settings\Bryan\Local Settings\COOKIES"

After running that in command prompt safe mode, I reboot. Everything seems
fine for a while, but soon enough the problem shows up again.

I am not running any firewall software. I DO have a rather large host file,
but none of the sites I'm experiencing this at are listed in it. I am not
running behind any sort of proxy.However, I do have IE6 setup (under Local
Are Network Settings) to 'Use Proxy Server for your LAN' and 'Bypass proxy
server for local addresses' to take advantage of my host file. My operating
system is Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 1 applied.

Any and all help appreciated, please help me fix this annying issue!

 

[Bryan]

Sigh, how did I know I would get this answer
Anyway, I've already read though that site. The problem I am having might be
related to the 'encoding' bug (If I click view -> encoding and select the
proper one (usually Western ISO, even though it is already selected!) it
will usually show the images. BUT that is only a very temporary solution as
I need to do it for ever single site. I was hoping for a better more
permanent solution other than Reinstalling... :/ I don't consider that an
option since I'm on dialup and getting all the patches and stuff will take
ages

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

When I had this symptom (with NT4 and IE55sp2 and IE6)
I concluded that network timing was somehow a factor.
The symptom could come and go randomly, stay around
for a few days and be noticeable or improve some or disappear.
The common factor was that when it happened it happened
in both of my partitions; so that's what made me think that my
ISP's or the network's performance had to be significant.

I didn't have a packet tracer at the time to be able to do much
more than speculate that then but I could tell that some Red-X
were being caused by a cache checking response not resulting
in an image being rendered. The symptom was worse when
the Automatic cache checking was in effect and least when
Every visit... was in effect. With the latter the rendering was
slightly slower but more reliable.

I'm still with the same ISP but am now using a faster machine
with XPsp1. I rarely see the Red-X symptom. Most of the time
when I bother to check on them they turn out to be legitimate
indicators of files which are not available.


FWIW

Robert Aldwinckle