Thanks Lynne and Bird you two have been very helpful ... I only know so much, but I'm constantly reading and learning!

Can someone help me doing this step by step when i try to do it either one images comes on all sub forums or the whole forum doesn't show images at all in old/new icons :(

Step 1. Make 4 icons per forum. call them:
CUSTOM_forum_new.gif
CUSTOM_forum_old.gif
CUSTOM_forum_new_lock.gif
CUSTOM_forum_old_lock.gif
(new is the version when there are new posts and the forum is open, old is when there are no new posts and the forum is open. new_lock is when there are new posts but the user can't post in that forum (it's locked.) old_lock is when there are no new posts and it's locked.

Step 2. Upload Files
Upload all images to your images/statusicon directory via FTP.

Step 3. Go to Admin CP -> Forum Manager
Edit the forum you want to make the custom icons for, find the box Prefix for Forum Status Images and put: CUSTOM_ in the box.

Now save and you should see the forum icons when you view the forum index.

Change "CUSTOM_" in the file names and the box in step 3 to whatever you want, usually a word that describes the forum you are making the icons for.

Right click on the broken image and depending on your browser either go to "properties" or "copy image address" and paste in the URL of the image here.

It's possible the style has it's own statusicon directory you will have to account for.

When i click on the image instead of showin it as
images/statusicons/Custom_forum_new/old.gif

it shows as

images/statusicons/Custom_forum_new/old-48.png

I even tried deleteing those icons which r currently in there with new/old-48.png but it still doesn't show the image.

Do you have vBulletin 3.x or 4.x?

@K!ng
You need to rename the image to:
custom_forum_*.gif

(Replace the * with new,old,locked)

You can change the extension of the .png image to .gif without any problem (if you want the same quality)

Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend you doing this, it will just increase the page load time.

BirdOPrey5 : i'm using 4.1.3 suite

Frosty : I did it the same way but still facing the same problem :(

Can we get an image of what you did in the Forum Manager and then a link to the forum.php page so we can check the image source code.