IE Problem, not what you think.
 

This is a little embarassing here, 'cause I usually answer these questions rather than ask them, but I'm frustrated and pissed, so I don't know what else to do. I'm running XP, current on all updates and service packs.

I've been having the usual IE problem where I try to right-click and save a pic and it only lets me do bitmaps. No problem, clear the cache, right? Well, I clear it, and it'll let me save about 2-3 jpg's, and it's back to bmp's again. What? I just cleared it! So I try clearing everything, check the "offline content" box, everything.

Still no luck.

Maybe my cache got turned down to a small size somehow. Nope, it's set at 10 gigs. (10687 mb to be exact).

I bump over to Mozilla Firebird, no problem saving jpgs at all. But I just don't like to use Firebird that much (sorry!).

Anybody got any ideas?

wow, that is annoying. i just noticed that i had exactly the same problem.

I E Does Not Save Graphics Files in the Proper Format
 

Internet Explorer Does Not Save Graphics Files in the Proper Format

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=260650

Re: I E Does Not Save Graphics Files in the Proper Format
 

'Preciate the effort, still no deal. All those things were cool. Thanks anyway.

Try viewing the source, then browsing directly to the page and trying to save as, see if that helps... or right click, show picture (sometimes there's some tiny sliver that isn't downloaded)

Try viewing pictures on your hard drive and then try to save those... just to get an idea of how bad the problem is. If you can't do that either, I'd almost think it's some kind of registry snafu, though I couldn't guess what.

its very unlikely but have you tried a smaller cache ? 10gb is a massive cache, i could see a problem with numbers overflowing in its calculations.

/wild guesss

Don't use Internet Explorer.

:)

if XP is anything like previous versions of windows, then using IE's built in tools to clear the cache is nearly a waste of time.

in 98, when I want my cache cleared, i use the find function, set the "look in" field to be the temporary internet folder and the search parameter to *.*, which finds everything. then I delete all the folders within the temp internet folder (the ones with the names like JFYD73JRFJHD8S8JN2J8 or some such nonsense). voila, cache is REALLY cleared.

DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think you helped me solve it.

Here's what I found:

1)The temporary internet folder in XP is unique to every user ID, not just one big folder like in previous versions. They're in the Documents and settings folder under the "local setting" within each user id. Took me a while to find them.

2) My main id had a ton of those folders with weird names, and the size of the "local settings" folder was roughly the same size as my cache, and just like you said, they had not been cleared out by the windows utility. BUT that's not the whole story.

3) When I tried to delete the weird folders individually, about 3/4's of them went away, but a bunch of them would not let me delete them. They gave me that weird error you get when you try to delete a corrupted file and windows can't find it.

4) I ended up deleting all that I could, but what was left was still the size of my cache almost, and a check of IE showed the problem still there. SO, if I can't delete them, I tried moving them to another bullshit directory so windows won't see them as being in the cache.

It worked!!

So, I guess the deal is that, under windows, whenever you try to do a batch delete and it runs into a corrupt file, it stops at that point. If you have corrupted files in your cache, then other files build up behind that one and eventually you have an un-emptyable cache.

I'll go back and clean up the corrupt files with chkdsk or something when I have time.

Thanks to all who posted and especially to Sion for the tip!

glad I could help

I like MyIE2 ... suffari(sp) is an awsome skin.

whaz that?