Is this a build you compiled yourself? There have been updates to external libraries lately on windows, perhaps the libraries haven't been updated from svn for this build.

I just tried with r29117 on Windows 7. Loading of jpeg is no problem at all here. Please rebuild after also having updated lib/windows (and if you're running 64bit Blender update lib/win64).

Please report back soon, otherwise I'll understand this as ALREADYFIXED

/Nathan

Note, I tried with jpegs from my camera taken sometime beginning this year and with a jpeg created with MS Paint just some minutes ago.

Unable to load JPEGS or BMP here also. Using build 29108 just downloaded from graphicall. Have not been able to load jpegs since build 28997

Console reports:- Wrong library version: Library is 62, caller expects 80 Unknown fileformat.
libpng error: Image width or height is zero in IHDR.

Using windows x64, Nvidea 8400, AMD 64 X2.

That seems to be what was suggested - the builder needs to update his/her library versions.

I'll create some new builds for 32bit and 64bit Windows and upload them today. I'll link them here and on my blog so you can easily test them.

it's a build from graphicall from Loopduplicate. other builders have the same problem but some other don't

This is a duplicate of bug #22452, so will close this one.
http://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=22452&group_id=9&atid=498

The problem is not the the lib dir is not updated, but that for MinGW the include files don't match the lib file.