Windows 7: Still have Window 7 RC1

And I'm now having a problem with any graphics program opening .gif images. I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden my usual graphics program, Irfanview, stopped showing the thumbnails on .gif images. All my .gif images just displayed the Irfanview icon and if I clicked on a .gif to open it, I would get a "Not Responding". So I switched the association to Windows Live Photo Gallery and the same thing happened. No thumbnails, just the WLPG icon. So, I changed the association to QuickTime and same thing. All my .jpg's open just fine. When I go into Windows Explorer I get the green bar across the top as though its searching for the files in that folder. The folder only contains 3.58MB of images, so what in the heck is going on? I started Windows Explorer in that folder about 10 minutes ago and it's still trying to load images.

Help please. Oh, and I uninstalled and reinstalled all 3 of those graphics programs, but it didn't change anything.

Larry Hi and welcome

Slow down dude. what does this have to do with "still have window 7 RC1"?

Do you have a win 7 dvd? do you have a backup you can restore from?

Ken J+

Well, I thought it might be important for anyone who is going to try to help to know what Version of Windows I have, that's all. I'm not specifically blaming Windows 7 RC1 and I can't because this just started recently and I don't know if I could have accidentally changed something or what. I've looked at all the normal places, but that doesn't mean I looked in the "right" places. I have the Windows 7 RC1 ISO dvd I made and yes, I do have a backup on an EHD.