Images not displaying properly in Win XP and IE

It seems you’re using a Lightbox plugin to enlarge and show the photo in a lightbox when clicked. Given that IE 8 is a rather old browser that had very poor support for modern scripting, my guess is that the plugin doesn’t work on that configuration.

If you can identify the Lightbox plugin that you’re using, I’d look in the support forum for that plugin or contact that plugin’s developer to find out if IE 8 is a supported browser.

At least on one computer, the problem ceased after a Java update.

there are a couple of things here:

windows xp is no longer supported by microsoft, so i’d recommend upgrading
IE 8 is no longer supported on windows xp and is nearly 5 years old, i recommend upgrading.
wordpress is now on version 4.0 so again, i’d recommend upgrading.

also, which lightbox plugin are you using?

I agree it would be great if everyone in the world would upgrade, but not all our readers have done so or even have the ability to. There is still a very broad base of XP users out there whose computers don’t have the capacity to run Windows 8 and can’t afford to get a new one, and we’d like them to be able to enjoy our blog.

Fair point Steve. One option would be to remove the Lightbox plugin and just use the built-in image features in WordPress. It won’t be as great of an experience for users with modern systems/browsers, but it will be functional for everyone.