Corrupt images on websites

[trlove]

Hi All,

I have a very strange problem, in 14 years of development I've never seen an issue like this:

http://www.tboult.co.uk/web_design_content_management_cms.html

http://www.tboult.co.uk/trevor_boult_links.html

The problem is not only on my site, most of my client sites have suddenly developed this problem too. If I overwrite the image, in a matter of minutes the image is corrupted again. I'm completely baffled other than flakey hardware causing the problem.

Any help very happily recieved

Cheers

Trevor
http://www.tboult.co.uk

[GSZX1337]

Seems fine to me. Are you using IE or FireFox? I was using Fire Fox.

[Kor]

FF ok for me either. What do you mean by corrupted? What happens?

[trlove]

Hi,

I was using IE, IE shows the corruption in the image whilst Firefox doesn't even display.

All pages have a bg image like:

http://www.tboult.co.uk/3dmodelling_animation.html

Cheers


Trevor

[trlove]

The image is being displayed but at some indeterminate point the image ceases to display ending in funny coloured 10x10px boxes.

Very strange.

Trevor

[Kor]

I see now.

I guess that you have written wrong the background's url

url( "../images/content_management_bottom.jpg" )
should be
url( "images/content_management_bottom.jpg" )

This will fix the FF problem, but I don't not what to say about the picture, as I can see it exactly as it is at
http://www.tboult.co.uk/images/content_management_bottom.jpg

[trlove]

Its nothing to do with the code as I haven't changed the site in 6 months.

I think we have some dodgy hardware (getting on for 6 years old) as I have just uploaded a site I'm currently developing and bingo, same thing, corrupt images appearing everywhere.

Not happy :(

Trevor

[WebJoel]

If you VIEW-SOURCE, you can see the first line says:

"....Compressed with JPEG Optimizer 4.00 www.xat.com..."

Okay, -little red flags going up here... What is "JPEG Optimizer 4.00"? Go to www.xat.com and find out. I haven't yet. But is this 'shareware'? 'Trialware' maybe? You know, -free to use for 6 weeks or 6-months and if you do not register/BUY your copy, works created on the interim 'trial' will self-mutilate themselves? I have heard of 'timed-out software' that, in a trial-ware sitution, can and will do this. -It forces the downloadee to actually have to buy their copy, or it will muss-up your fine graphics after x-many days, weeks or months without purchasing...

-Just an idea. I could be wrong.
Compressing a JPEG to save KB is a noble thing to do, but I personally do not trust 3rd-party software to do this for me. I use my trusted, reliable and paid-for software.
I used a 'html shrink' product, shareware of course. It takes out superflous spaces and non-essential things like, oh, quotation marks, etc. Reduces the HTML document's footprint by 10, 20 or 30% easily enough. Some text-heavy page can realize a 40 or 50% reduction of KB size (rare, but it can happen). Big problem though... if you ever need to go back in and edit that page ever again, -it is all 'shrunken', -reams and reams of text and code symbols all rammed together, 'machine-friendly, developer-hostile'. -Maybe that is what is happening here, too...

[intiendes]

Oh, maybe the post above solved the problem. Seems to me it is what triggered it. At first I thought it was a virus. SCARY!

[trlove]

Many thanks for everyones input.

I've used JPEG optimiser for many years with no problems. I have now found GIF's are being corrupted as well.

I found an article that does look like the problem we have, have a look at example 1 as this is what happening to our images.

http://www.ptgrey.com/support/kb/index.asp?a=4&q=188

The page with the offending gifs here: http://www.whitelandswood.com/

You'll notice the 2 transparent gifs have corruption running along the bottom.

Look like we are going to have to update our server, about time though.

Cheers

Trevor

[tracknut]

That article refers to video images saturating a firewire connection.... not sure it has any relationship to your issue. Given the files are good when you drop them on the server, it's some process or fault that happens after that. I can only think of a few: a batch process though this compression, or a hard drive corruption, or some other person/process munging them. Can you try the site w/o the compression gizmo and see if it works?

Dave

[jonj]

Trevor, you have any luck figuring this out? I have recently experienced the same problem. I was leaning toward hardware as the problem but have tried a number of things with no success yet. (Defrag, MFT Defrag, New RAM, More RAM, ChkDsk, Replace Disk Drives). Next step is to replace the entire chassis. My images normally show up corrupted after a day or so vs. somewhat immediately as you indicated.

Thanks,

Jon

[trlove]

Hi Jon,

Unfortunatley we have have not found a solution to the problem. We have now resorted to getting a new server.

HTH

Trevor

[toicontien]

I've been silently following this thread for a bit now. When I was working tech support for an ISP about 5 or 6 years ago, our customers' personal web sites started doing the same exact thing. If it wasn't immediately it was within minutes that images became corrupt. Almost a mirror image of the problem described here. I think we tracked it down to a faulty network card that was transmitting corrupted data. The server in question had a couple network cards and only one was bad, showing significant packet loss.

The images that corrupted right away were using the bad nic when the image was uploaded, and if the image seemed fine for a bit, it was because the other good nic was being used to transmit the data.