Can't see images on web pages

Helpline Q&A Directory

For some reason, Internet Explorer has stopped displaying GIF images when viewing local copies of web pages. It displays the broken link symbol (x in a box) instead. The files do exist as I can view them in a different browser. Jpeg images display okay, and I can view both GIFs and Jpegs when browsing online. I tried installing Internet Explorer 5.1 but the problem remained. Any ideas?

It sounds as if something has changed the content type property for GIF files. This is the information that the web browser uses to tell what a file is: it doesn't go by the filename extension (such as GIF).

When surfing online the content type information is provided to the browser by the web server. When browsing offline the information is provided by Windows in accordance with settings stored in the Registry. The trouble is, the exact solution may depend on how it got changed in the first place.

To confirm that the wrong content type is the problem, use Windows Explorer to locate a GIF image on your hard disk. Select Details view and see what file type the file is. If it's the default, GIF image, that's a good sign. If it's something else, another program has changed the file association and rectifying it may be more difficult.

Still in Windows Explorer click Tools, Folder Options, select the File Types and then select the file type you found for GIF images from the list. In the File type details panel, Content Type should be shown as image/GIF. If it's something else, you've found the cause of the problem. Now how to correct it.

Select the file type and click Edit. The Edit File Type dialog box will appear. Under Content Type (Mime) select image/GIF from the drop-down list. Check that the default extension for content type changes to GIF. If it doesn't, select that too, then click ok. This should fix it.

If you can't carry out the above steps try changing the content type using the Registry Editor. This is potentially risky, so make sure you know how to restore a Registry backup before you start. See tips, Back up the Registry and Restore the Registry from the backup.

Start RegEdit, then open Hkey_Classes_Root and scroll down to the entry for GIF. Select it and in the righthand pane there should be an entry called Content Type with the data value image/GIF. If it doesn't exist, right-click the righthand pane and select New, String Value, then name the value Content Type. Double-click Content Type and enter (or edit) the string so that it says image/GIF.