EDIT: issue only solved temporarily. Issue comes back over time.
although this is an old topic i seemed to have solved this on my install of 1.7.7.0
i went the the folder /img/tmp selected all the photos in there and compressed them into a zip file for backup purposes then deleted them. I left only the folders, index.php and a file named fileType. back on the dashboard i refreshed it and it seems to load the correct images for most viewed. will see if that holds out or causes some other issues but i suspect it will be fine.