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Home > Support Home > Articles > AOL ART Image File Format Handling In EnCase
AOL ART Image File Format Handling In EnCase
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Background
When you view a site on the web with images, the graphic files are cached on your local system. Graphic files that are large in size tend to slow down this transfer of
data to your system. The slower the internet connection, the longer the graphic download time will be. AOL has a proprietary system of graphic file compression which is
designed to speed up this loading of web pages. Even though GIFs and JPGs are usually already compressed, AOL compresses them again when you load a page within AOL. This
double compression also takes place when you download a graphic individually, and it is this double compressed graphic that has been now given the extension .ART. Since
it is in a unique specialized double compressed format, only AOL and Internet Explorer can read it and open it.
AOL .ART Files and EnCase
EnCase version 5 has built in capability to view .ART files. To verify that this feature is enabled within EnCase, go to Tools > Options, and make sure that “Enable ART
and PNG image display” is checked. This feature is enabled, but can be turned off by preference from the Options window as shown below:
Although this feature is enabled in EnCase, Windows XP still may have the feature blocked.
Allowing .ART File Viewing in Windows
To fix this issue, open a browser and navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/recommended/aolfix/
to install the AOL Image Support Update. This update is safe to install into Windows XP (SP2), even though it’s only labeled for Windows 2000.
In June of 2006, Microsoft released several security patches (918439 and 916281) that were a fix to a Microsoft vulnerability, which disabled the AOL .ART image type
within Windows. With these patches installed, EnCase IS NOT able to view .ART files. Uninstall these patches via the Windows Control Panel by selecting “Add and Remove
Programs”. Check the box on top labeled “Show Updates” and scroll to Microsoft Updates (Windows XP - Software Updates). Find the aforementioned patches and remove them.
If you have Automatic Updates enabled in Windows XP, it will continuously prompt you to install these patches, as they are fixes to security vulnerabilities as addressed
on Microsoft’s site. You may install these at your discretion; however you will have to repeat the above process each time you go to view AOL .ART files.
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