Images suddenly not displaying

running Apache on Mandrake 9

[Lindsey Kuper]

Out of nowhere, all of the images on my website suddenly stopped displaying. When I go to view the images in my browser, it's as though the browser is going to them (I get an image file name in the title bar, etc.), but I don't see anything.

I checked and double-checked to make sure it wasn't a permissions problem. Everything else displays fine. I can't imagine what I might have done wrong. Please help -- let me know what more info I should provide, if any. Thanks!

[Dpeper]

My site was doing this from my computer and no one elses, and a bunch of other weird stuff came soon after. Ended up being a virus. Could be related? I dont know, but worth checking.

[jdMorgan]

Lindsey,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

The most important bit of info is, "What changed between the last time the images were visible, and the first time they became invisible?"

If you did not change anything on your site, this could just be a browser problem.

Test your site from another PC - maybe call a friend to try it for you.

If you isolate it to your machine, try an alternate browser.

A lot of strange things happen when/if IE's Temporary Internet Files folder gets bloated; Flush that out using Tools->Internet Options, and keep it small -- 16Meg is sufficient for broadband, 64Meg for dial-up. Anything over that is just wasting disk space. Set it to clear entries after 10 days maximum.

Jim

[Lindsey Kuper]

Okay, I've checked it with a different browser (Konqueror; I had been using Mozilla), and the images show up fine in Konqueror. They also show up from the other computers I've tried.

I can't think of anything I changed -- that's the trouble. And I don't use IE, but thanks anyway for the tips.

Tell me more about the virus, please. That's sounding like what's going on with me.

[jdMorgan]

I'd imagine most viruses would attack IE/Win, but I don't know what specific exploit Dpeper had in mind.

Check your Mozilla image settings just to be sure; They're in: Edit->Preferences->Privacy and Security->Images

Jim

[PatrickDeese]

Could it be that Mozilla is pulling the page from a cache version - in mozilla if you hold down shift and click on the refresh it forces the browser to pull a fresh version from the server.

My second question would be if you use JS in your image display code - perhaps to make a popout window that matches the dimensions of the image file.

I only ask because one of my clients bought full version of Zone Alarm and it was blocking JS by default it wouldn't show any images that had JS anywhere in the tag (really basic

onClick="window.open"

stuff).

So perhaps if something is deactivating JS - that is doing it too.

[Lindsey Kuper]

Aha, fixed it -- yeah, it was a Mozilla problem. My site was set on "Site cannot load images" in the im age preferences. Weird -- I must have accidentally done some keyboard shortcut that blocks images on the current site or something.

So nope, not a virus. Linux mostly keeps me safe from them, but I'm relieved all the same. =)