WinXP: Problem with animated GIF's

[Jerry Falletta]

After several runs of AdAware and Spybot S&D to remove suspected spyware, I am finding that animated GIF's are no longer animated. The same thing happened last year on an older system that runs Win2K.

Is there a file in the OS that may have been corrupted? If so, where would such a file reside? Is there a fix for this, short of formatting and reloading Windows?

[Zac3010]

Do you mean that you weren’t able to see the GIF animated in Windows and Picture and Fax Viewer specifically, or rather that all of your GIF’s were somehow corrupted and now don’t work in any program (such as a browser, Adobe Image Ready, etc.)?

[Jerry Falletta]

The GIF's are not animated when viewed in a browser (i.e., IE or Firefox); they appear as still images.

Another thing that I have noticed is that my network connection drops after the computer sits idle for several hours. Re-booting seems to clear this up (until it drops again).

These problems started at about the same time, as far as I can determine. Norton AV does not show any problems, and the AdAware and SpyBot show nothing out of the ordinary as well. My network interface is included on the Asus motherboard, and I have disabled the power-saver feature to that device, just to rule that out, and that did not help. My initial hunch is that the problems are software related.

Using a GIF viewer program (GIFViewer), the animation appears as it should; apparently this annoying problem affects only those GIF's viewed in a web browser.

[Javelin]

In IE Tools->Internet Options Click the "Advanced tab" Under the "Multimedia" heading is "Play animations in web pages" checked?

[Jerry Falletta]

That option is checked... this thing is starting to bug me........... there has to be something that I am missing here.