Images not loading in Firefox and Internet Explorer

Try this in Firefox:

• Go to Tools (alt + t) -> Options
• Click the Content tab
• In the Fonts & Colours section click the Colours... button
• Make sure Allow pages to choose their own colours, instead of my selections above is checked

If I uncheck that option on my machine then I can replicate your symptoms. Obviously this does not affect Internet Explorer so I don't know for sure if it will help. But this check would at least rule out browser settings.

If it doesn't work then I would need more information:

• What other sites are particularly affected?
• Who is your internet provider and are you accessing the internet through a proxy? Is it mobile broadband?
• Are any other machines using the same connection and are they affected as well?

This was a theme issue.

The user had changed his Windows 7 theme and broke those images. I noticed that an MSE popup was not the color that it should have been and the sticky notes that he had on his desktop were white in the middle when they should have been yellow all the way through.

I set the theme back to Windows 7 (the default) and it fixed the issue. I don't know what happened when he changed it back, but ultimately the theme was the issue

I don't have any idea why

Interestingly enough, it seems like Google Chrome sometimes ignores the Windows "hosts" file (source), whereas Internet Explorer and Firefox obey it. So, you might have an entry in your hosts file that blocks certain images, e.g. offsite images that belong to a different domain name, then Windows might not be able to connect to them.

Try checking your hosts file (by default; %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) and look for anything suspicious.

If your unfamiliar with your hosts file, it should only contain

127.0.0.1 localhost

by default, as well as comments (lines that start with semi-colons)