Will Not View Pictures Sequentially in a Directory

[jamesgl]

More than half the time for reasons that I do not understand, IrfanView will not jump to the next picture in a directory full of pictures when I hit the spacebar, and the left and right arrow buttons are grayed out preventing me from looking it more than a single picture.

I've gone through the miscellaneous one, miscellaneous two, and miscellaneous three tabs, but I can't find the right combination to prevent Ifranview from either altering itself, or for some unknown reason, not willing to cycle through all the pictures in a single directory.

If I copy all of the pictures that I want to look at to an entirely newly-created directory, when I first open IrfanViewin in that newly created directory to look at pictures, it seems to cycle correctly through the pictures. But that doesn't last very long.

Can somebody suggest what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone offers me!
IrfanView Version 3.99
Windows XP professional service pack two

[NOP]

You can either use the space bar to jump from one pic to another, and if the pic you started with is the last in the directory (depending on the sort order: Options - Sort directory files) it will give you the option to stay in the current directory and start over with the first one or move to another, e.g. the parent directory.

You can also use the arrow keys left/right to change from one image to the next in the directory IF you have chosen one of these settings:

Image - Display options- window mode - "Fit images to window" (means the viewing size of all images, smaller ones will be enlarged, larger ones reduced)
or
Image - Display options- window mode - "Fit only big images to window" (means the viewing size of images bigger than the current size of the IV window will be reduced, smaller ones will be displayed in their actual size)
or
View - Full screen options - "Fit to screen all images"
or
View - Full screen options - "Fit to screen large images only"
(Remark: All these options will only affect the viewing size on screen or in the IV window, the picture-file will remain unchanged, to alter the size of the stored image permanently, use: Image - "Resize/Resample")

Up to now I never have encountered that it stopped in the middle of a directory...

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Unless you load a file from disk, the option to browse will be greyed out. When you paste an image from the clipboard, it is not a file.

[Skippybox]

If you don't have the Not a File message in the status bar, then tell us what you see in the IrfanView thumbnail window, versus the directory count display.