If it's not Fasterfox did you edit certain settings in the configuration manually? Specifically network.http.pipelining, because not all servers support that.
is this just affecting problems in your web browser or is it effecting the problems the images on you hard drive? if it is just on ur hard drive try assosateing a image with a program like windows image and fax viewer or MS paint and see what you get then, if not it sounds like something messed up when you installed windows again.
well I guess it would be of no use for me to post up pics showing the difference as you can't see them.
Anyway your taskbar is not default.. it's not a flat colour like the default xp taskbar, it has a shine and looks like is made out of glass... I had one much like that one time... I think it was called Luna glass or something like that..
did you install any theme packs after you formatted?
That's the default style for Media Center Edition, and I'm sure that doesn't have anything to do with images not loading. The only other thing I can think of is a firewall or other security settings preventing images from loading.