Private image files not cached but set to cache in .htaccess - SOLVED by using Public file system

I've got drupal 5.7 living on a windows 2003 server running apache 2.0, php 5.1.2 and mysql 5.0. I am using the private files setting (files directory above root) and I have drupal normal cache enabled.

My problem is that drupal never seems to cache any of my images saved above root. I have it set to cache images in my .htaccess file and I have mod_deflate, mod_expires adn mod_headers enabled in apache, I've researched and applied recommendations for optimizing drupal but still, my gifs, jpgs and pngs are not being cached, even though I've indicated in my .htaccess file that I want them cached.

YSlow shows this for images on my front page:

These components do not have a far future Expires header:
(11/19/1978) http://dev.domain.org/system/files/admin/pconnectAd.gif
(11/19/1978) http://dev.domain.org/system/files/admin/schoolStartAd.gif
(11/19/1978) http://dev.domain.org/system/files/admin/qlinks_icons2.gif

Header for qlinks_icons2.gif:

Response Headers
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:08:47 GMTServer: Apache
Set-Cookie: SESS604546ee5ef82dd239a01f453b15fcbc=9c5he3gbc1f8n3l32dl87865u5;

expires=Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:42:07 GMT; path=/; domain=.dev.domain.org
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:08:47 GMT
Cache-Control: store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=73
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: image/gif

Yet a cssimage saved within root directory is cached:
cssimage http://dev.domain.org/themes/mar/img/banner2.jpg 6/15/2018

Response Headers
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:41:37 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:21:23 GMT
Etag: "4f06-a8e8-d3f9887c"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 43240
Cache-Control: max-age=1209600
Expires: Sat, 16 Jun 2018 16:41:37 GMT
Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: image/jpeg

I noticed there's a difference with cache-control but I don't understand why the image stored above root is different.

I've put this in my .htaccess file:

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled.
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  # Enable expirations.
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 years"
  # Do not cache dynamically generated pages.
  ExpiresByType text/html A1
 
  # Set up 10 year caching on commonly updated files
  <FilesMatch "\.(xml|js|css)$">
  ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 years"
  </FilesMatch>
  
  # Set up 10 year caching on commonly updated files
  <FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|png)$">
  ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 years"
  </FilesMatch>

  # Force no caching for dynamic files
  <FilesMatch "\.(php)$">
  ExpiresActive Off
  </FilesMatch>
  
  # Cache various files for 2 weeks
<FilesMatch "\.(flv|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|swf|js|css|pdf|txt|html|htm)$">
  Header set Cache-Control "max-age=1209600"
</FilesMatch>
 
</IfModule>

It took 36.767s to load my front page according to Yslow which I think is primarily due to the fact that it has to keep regenerating my images because they aren't being cached. One thing I notice is that my css, js files and most of the images in the theme and drupal directories (all in site root) are cached but images that are located above the root don't seem to be.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions/recommendations.

*****Edited June 3, 2010 ******

Seemed only solution was to switch to the public file system which is what I did and now my flash, gifs, jpgs are being saved to browser cache which has tremendously helped with the loading times of my pages.

Recommend setting up a development/mirror site and switching to public there first to iron out the kinks before you do it on a production server. You should also have access to PhpMyAdmin which helps out so you can replace the old private file paths (system/files) with the new public paths (sites/default/files). Using this sql code in PMA was a great help:

UPDATE tablename SET tablefield = replace(tablefield, "findstring", "replacestring");

Good luck.