Thanks cg,
I I never thought of that, but with a little research I found the problem so I'm gonna answer my own question in case anyone else has the problem. I am using paint shop pro 7 to manipulate my graphics. I have most of my graphics files associated with psp and other than FP have no problems. I tried to disassociate use another manipulater and that's how I found the problem. After I changed which software my graphics were associated with some of them were not being recognized by any of my software except PSP. If you are using PSP and you right click one of your graphics in FP then click properties it will say it is a PSP file. FP recognizes it as a .gif for all intents and purposes but for some reason the "preview" mode sees an unrecognizable file. I went to "my computer" (Windows explorer will work too) clicked on "view" clicked on "folder options" then "file types" , "edit". I had no such file as ".gif" only .psp etc.. I just "added" .gif and I could finally see the preview mode in FP. Hope this can save somebody some time, I know it would have freed up some time for me to work on some of the other FP problems I've created for myself.
Sarge