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why IE will only let you save as BMP

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Sometimes you go to save an image from a web page and the only option available to you is BMP, even though the image is obviously not a BMP. People often wonder why, so I will tell you.

For whatever reason (perf, architectural simplicity, I dunno) the designers of mshtml decided to keep images around in memory as BMPs. When you go to save an image in IE, the first thing we do is check to see if the image is in the cache. If the image is not in the cache, the only representation we have of the image (without downloading it again) is mshtml's internal representation, which is a BMP. Mostly people see this when their cache is full. The easiest way to fix this is to clear your cache. Another symptom of this is nothing happens when you View->Source on a web page.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2003
    Useful tip, thanks. Came to know of your blog because Peter Torr mentioned it.

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2003
    The fact that View -> Source doesn't work (and doesn't even give you an error message!) when your cache is full is pretty stupid :-( I had this very error just the other day...

  • Anonymous
    December 19, 2003
    This also happens when the image url is part of a cgi-request, often seen with images linked from fark.com. Fark uses a url redirection cgi script that redirects you to the real page. For example, http://go.fark.com/cgi/fark/go.pl?IDLink=758110&location=http://www.juneauempire.com/images/121603/PostOffice.jpgIf you try to save the image, it's bmp only, but if you reload the page again, you can save it as jpg.

  • Anonymous
    January 14, 2004
    Ok, so why does the cache get filled up so easily?
    Mine is set to use 950Mb, but I still can't save images at the moment.

    Doesn't the cache ever delete anything automatically? Couldn't it delete any file I havn't access in the last month, or the last week. Why doesn't it delete the oldest file to make room for the newest one?

    When I try to empty the cache Tools -> Internet Options -> Delete Files it takes about 5 minutes and locks the browser window up for ages.

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2004
    Shouldn't we fix it in SP2 then? :P

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2004
    Actually, this (BMP save as and View->Source "nothinghappenness") only seems to only happen on the computers with larger drives, say over 60Gb. My guess is that because cache size is allocated as a percentage of the available disk space, IE bites off a little more cache than it can chew and, as a result, fails to remain in control of the cache once it reaches certain mass (I am trying to be very generic here -- this is a guess). If you manually set the size of your cache to something more reasonable, like 90Mb, you should never encounter this problem.

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2004
    There's no time like the present to fix this bug (aka SP2). :)

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2004
    >> For whatever reason (perf, architectural simplicity, I dunno) the designers of mshtml decided to keep images around in memory as BMPs.

    The images are probably kept in memory as a DIB because that's what you need to draw an image on Windows. You wouldn't want to convert the image from JPG or GIF every time you need to display it. It would take too long.

    >>When you go to save an image in IE, the first thing we do is check to see if the image is in the cache.

    Yup.

    >> If the image is not in the cache, the only representation we haveof the image (without downloading it again) is mshtml's internal representation, which is a BMP.

    It's a DIB in memory. MSHTML stores the DIB as a BMP.

    >> Mostly people see this when their cache is full.

    The cache works like, well, a cache. A cache keeps the recent stuff and throws out the old stuff. If the images for recent pages are not in the cache, it's not because the cache is full.

    >> The easiest way to fix this is to clear your cache.

    Have you tried this?

    >> Another symptom of this is nothing happens when you View->Source on a web page.

    The real reason that the image is not cached is that the the server sent cache control headers saying not to cache the image. If the server is telling the browser not to cache images, it's also probably telling it not to cache the page.

    Online banking sites are very concerned about this sort of thing.

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2004
    Gentoo: So, why does it then work for many people to clear the cache? And why does it happen always once it started? There are certain circumstances, already mentioned here in the comments, where this symptom also occurs. Another one is when using user:password@domain syntax to log in. But these are not the same!
    Dimitri Glazkov: Could indeed be at the source of the problem. I have never encountered it on any machine, but have seen many complaints in the newsgroups about it. I don't have drives over 50 GB and I usually set the cache to 50 - 100 MB on each machine.

    There is another caching bug. The IE history and caching seems to work different depending on if you are using a proxy or not. Visit some pages and then use the history (Back and Forward) buttons to walk thru them. If you don't use a proxy it checks each page for a newer version and reloads it if so. That makes it considerably slower. If you drop the network connection you'll get the famous "cannot find ..." page. However, if you are using a proxy, you can drop the connection, et voilà, the page will come up instantly from the cache. Of course, same thing happens if you keep the network connection, it grabs the page from the cache instantly. It's just for proving that it's not the local proxy delivering the page so fast that you don't notice the difference.

    Why am I telling this? Because I think this could have a connection to the bmp/no source issue as well.

    Jeff: It's a very well known bug and I don't see any reason why IE couldn't detect the problem itself and fix it. So, why doesn't it?

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2004
    That gentoo guy is right about one thing. The IE cache is supposed to toss out old data and replace it with new. Something's not working as expected.

    Dmitry is might be on to the reason for the unexpected behavior. If IE uses a 32 bit integer to keep track of the size of the cache, then IE will get confused when the cache goes over 2 GB (signed integer) or 4 GB (unsigned integer). Disks are much larger now than they were back in the mid-nineties when the IE got it's start. It's easy to believe that they made a mistake like this.

  • Anonymous
    January 19, 2004
    For all I know from using IE for many years is this BMP issue has been around since early versions of IE and it happens across Win98, WinNT, 2000
    It happens on small and large HDs, so I doubt that large HDs are of any issue in this context.

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2004
    same machine, logging on as administrator, default save as is jpg, log on as a regular (power) user, will only allow saving as bmp. .. playing around with the cache does not solve the problem

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2004
    it's my guess that when the cache is full, IE stops storing information
    [when i right click>properties an image the file type it's not available]

    [when i reaload a page full of images [jpg's gif's] IE donwloads the images again, as opposed to just refresh the contents already stored in the cache ]

    i usually solve this by cleaning up the cache but that's time consuming, annoying and i must do it on regular basis.

    i hope someone founds a cure for this.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2004
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978

    I had this problem, and the solution in the above knowledge base article fixed it.

    - Josh

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2004
    All that said, a way to get round it is to right click on the image and choose properties, copy the URL of the image and download with a download manager. It's a bit more time consuming, but if it's a gif you really would like it's nice trick ;)

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2004
    i agree with the big disk theory, bmp save behaviour started when i connected a 160gb usb2 disk to my laptop.

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2004
    I know how to fix it:
    Use FireFox or Opera...

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2004
    clearing the cache did it for me. thanks!

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2004
    Thanks heaps Jeff! it works after I did the steps in the site. Guys, in case you didn't see this post, here it is:

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978

    quoting:
    ># re: why IE will only let you save as BMP
    > http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978
    >
    >I had this problem, and the solution in the above knowledge base article fixed it.
    >
    >- Josh

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2004
    I am not a programmer, but I have to ask. It is reasonable for IE to look in the cache to obtain the image in its original form. It isn't reasonable for the cache to "fill up." Isn't it supposed to automatically remove the old content to make room? This is why MS is so frustrating--how do you decide which bugs to fix???

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2004
    Thanks, I appreciate your response!

    I wasn't blaming you personally. I was blaming Microsoft.

    This is a really common problem. If you search groups.google.com, it is frequently reported by that subset of users who are sophisticated enough to figure out NNTP.

    "Normal" users, like my mom, are not going to discover newsgroups, let alone stumble on the "solution" of emptying the cache. Come to think of it, they probably won't even realize there is a difference between JPEG and BMP :)

    Anyway, the thing that 'bugs' me (pun intended) is that this is just a flaw in the cache feature, and it should be straightforward to fix, but it feels like MS just doesn't care.

    Thanks for listening! Sean.

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2004

    Both using information on this link: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978 (Thanks Josh!) and using download manager worked for me, but the first was a permanent solution to a temporary problem (unless it happens again...)

    It's a good idea to clear the cache either way anyhow, eh?

  • Anonymous
    May 28, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 28, 2004
    Aparently clearing the cache does not always fix the problem...

  • Anonymous
    May 28, 2004
    It's Judy again. I just found the answer to this problem if anyone else needs it. I had placed a shortcut to Notepad.exe on my desktop. I was directed to remove any notepad.exe files from the desktop (C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersDesktop or C:Documents and Settings<Your user profile>Desktop.) It worked!! Thanks for replying Jeff!
    Judy

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2004
    another fix

    click on tools then internet options
    under temporary internet files click on settings
    make sure automaticly is selected

    This fixed my problem of my cache never clearing itself.
    I had the first circle selected.

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2004
    I have tried all the suggestions from microsoft and yourselves to try and solve the problem.... but it is still only saving jpegs in bmp format :(

  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2004
    I too have tried every solution ever listed (even some pretty dumb ones) to no avail. I consider myself extremely computer-literate and am running XP Pro and constantly updated "fixes". Note: never had the problem until recently on this 2-year old machine with no changes in hardware/software except I was stupid enough to ignore all the comments about not upgrading to IE 6 when it came out and did so, but even that was a long time ago. What upsets me most is that Microsoft has known about this problem for years and refuses to address it. Someday they'll realize it's all these small things (in their eyes) that push us to Linux or other solutions. I'm almost there myself, and when I get there, the over 400 users I affect will also be switched over.

  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 14, 2004
    The comment has been removed

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