Why so many images don't load on pages the first time?

[Morbius]

For about the last 6 months or so, I've noticed a problem that showed up
on our work machines as well as my home systems. I think it began at
the same time on all the machines, and I think it was related to some
service pack or other IE update that was installed about that time.

What happened was, all of a sudden lots of web sites that had previously
worked fine started having a problem where frequently not all of the
images on the page would appear. Instead, they'd just show the little
blank "placeholder" and icon. Note that on sites it does occur on, it
doesn't always fail...sometimes all the images load fine. But on these
failing sites, at least 50% of the time many of the images fail to load
on the first attempt. Note that it never stops all the images on a page
from loading, and the ones that do fail to load are always the same
ones. Usually just reloading the page, or right-clicking on one of the
blank placeholders and selecting "Show Picture", always causes all of
the images to then appear. But the if you close IE and restart, and go
back to the same page, odds are that those same images will fail to load
again.

Now, I found something in the KB about this that says it has to do with
the "encoding" on a page, and recommended switching from Western, to
Windows, to Auto, etc. But this just reloads the page, which I've
already said usually causes the images to appear anyway. And it
certainly isn't a good fix, having to swap encoding settings constantly.
The net of it is, this problem showed up on ALL my machines (which would
5 different ones, on various versions of Win 2k, Win 2k Pro, Win 98, and
Win XP Pro), and all at about the same time, when they had all worked
fine before. So it was obviously some change made through an installed
update, and it broke what was working before. Is there any way to get
MS to look at fixing this?

Note that in my informal testing, the missing images are normally .GIF
files, and are usually contained in a table layout on the page, used as
spacers, or something similar. Quite often they seem to be tiny
transparent .GIFs that are there to align other images. So I don't know
if this is some weird quirk of IE trying to interfer with transparent 1-
pixel GIF "web bugs", or what.

If you want to see a couple of sites where this fails regularly, try
these:

www.matrox.com - On the home page of this site, about half the time you
go here you'll see the the main image in the center of the page, as well
as a couple others, always load fine. But a bunch of images that are
supposed to surround this main image (and which are all pointing to the
same file and are just supposed to fill in the aread around the main
image) fail to load. Again, right-clicking in any of the failed
placeholders and selecting "Show Picture" will cause all of the missing
images to load.

www.adobe.com - This page is loaded with graphics, most of which load
fine. But if you put your cusore over the "Support" option at the top
of the page, you'll get a drop-down menu with links in it. About half
the time, there will be little blank placeholder boxes just to the right
of all these links. Again, right-clicking on them and selecting "Show
Picture" causes them all to appear.

 

[DVarnau]

Many possibilities...

Try the quick, easy fix first. Clear the IE cache from IE> Tools> Internet
Options> General> Delete files and Delete offline content. Reset the TIF
folder size to about 50MB and clear it occasionally.

Next, is another program causing this? The following information comes from
Mike Burgess:
- - - -
Are you using a Firewall or "filtering software"?

Several of these are known to cause problems:
1) Zone Alarm Pro [Private Header Info - enabled?]
Reset "Ad Blocking" and "Cookie Control" to "medium"
"Mobile Code Control" = Off

2) Symantec (ISS\NIS)[Enable Browser Privacy - enabled]
Active Content - "Allow All Script To Execute"
Problem: some sites cannot detect the 128 bit encryption
Solution: Completely remove and reinstall NIS.
[more info]
Web Pages Display a Red "X" Instead of a Graphic
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316545 [Norton Products]

3) Any "ad blocking" software that blocks "http_referer"
or contains entries that are blocking access to the desired site.

4) HOSTS file that contains entries that are blocking access to the desired
site.

5) Cookie blocking software that are blocking "required" Cookies.

6) Pop-up blockers that are stripping header\url info.

7) WebWasher Standard Filter/URL Filter

8) Make sure the following entry is not corrupt:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings]
"User Agent"="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Win32)"

Note: "Win32" = Windows 98\ME
Other versions = (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0

To check your "User Agent":
Paste the below into the Address Bar and view the output:

javascript:navigator.userAgent

[Example WinME output]
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)
- - - -

Also see:
221134 - Some Images, Contents, or Controls May Not Be Displayed When
Viewing a Web Page: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=221134
283807 - Pictures Are Not Displayed on Web Sites in Internet Explorer
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=283807

Other possibilities at http://www.generation.net/~hleboeuf/ieimage.htm
and
http://www.mvps.org/inetexplorer/answers.htm#jpg_gif

Hope this helps,
Don

 

[Guest]

I have checked all those things, umpteen times, as have
the many, many other people that have complained about
this problem for months on this group and others. This
problem is NOT due to anything on all these many client
machines...once and for all, it is a problem with
IE/Windows, that was introduced with some patch or
service pack months ago. I'm sorry, but I'm so tired of
the so-called "MVPs" and MS reps blowing this problem off
as something that the end-user needs to do. It simply is
not a setting, another piece of software, or anything
else on the end-users systems. If you'd read my post in
full, you'd see that I can replicate the problem on any
number of systems at work or at home, running different
levels of Windows, with quite different loads, software,
and setups. MS needs to quit making excuses and fess up
to this problem, once and for all.

 

[genkiboy]

What happened was, all of a sudden lots of web sites that had previously
worked fine started having a problem where frequently not all of the
images on the page would appear. Instead, they'd just show the little
blank "placeholder" and icon. Note that on sites it does occur on, it
doesn't always fail...sometimes all the images load fine. But on these
failing sites, at least 50% of the time many of the images fail to load
on the first attempt. Note that it never stops all the images on a page
from loading, and the ones that do fail to load are always the same
ones. Usually just reloading the page, or right-clicking on one of the
blank placeholders and selecting "Show Picture", always causes all of
the images to then appear. But the if you close IE and restart, and go
back to the same page, odds are that those same images will fail to load
again.

i'm having the same exact problem and was even able to duplicate the
two examples you gave. any progress on figuring this out?

 

[genkiboy]

i'm having the same exact problem and was even able to duplicate the
two examples you gave. any progress on figuring this out?

figured mine out--used REGEDIT to remove a couple of registry keys,
then rebooted:

Open the registry and - browse to:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\PROTOCOLS\Name-Space Handler\
- Delete the 'http', 'https' and 'ftp' (leave the 'mk' key)
Restart PC for changes to take effect.

fwiw, i found this at:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7995774~root=winme~start=-2~mode=flat

mine works great now. hope this helps you, too.

genkiboy

 

[ElevenBravo]

What happened was, all of a sudden lots of web sites that had previously

i'm having the same exact problem and was even able to duplicate the
two examples you gave. any progress on figuring this out?

I am having these problems also now. It started happening yesterday.
Amazon won't load 90% of the .gif images on the homepage. It hangs up
with 52 items remaining. CNET won't load at all, I get like 2 small
images and that is it. Microsoft.com works fine, images and all, but
when I go deeper into support, and start attaching to .aspx links, it
stops loading completely and I get error messages.

This isn't my network or machine. My Macs work fine, and my laptop
works fine if I am using Opera. But IE on my laptop just flat out
doesn't work. It won't load pages that Safari on my Mac and Opera on
my laptop load flawlessly.

I have deleted cookies, emptied the cache, all to no avail.

What is weird is that it happened almost instantaneously. One minute,
it was connecting to everything. The next minute almost every page I
went to had problems. My homepage @ my.yahoo.com was the only page
that I could consistently get to load over the last 24 hours. Even
Microsoft.com had a couple of instances where a couple of .gifs
wouldn't load.

Mind you, these problems are not occuring now as I use OPERA (a very
cool browser by the way), so the problem has to be in Internet
Explorer. I wouldn't be so worried, except that I can't do Office
Update anymore because the Microsoft website requires Internet
Explorer to use Office Update. I tried using my Internet Explorer for
Office Update, and sure enough, it doesn't load the page at all. I am
dead in the water.

Any suggestions?

11B

 

[JiBe]

[...] MS needs to quit making excuses and fess up
to this problem, once and for all.

I definitely agree with that. It can be seen on various website that
some registry keys need to be changed to solve this problem.
When will microsoft adress this issue and offer a proper patch on
Windows Update?

JiBe