A lot depends upon what you mean by "browser". CS2 doesn’t have a browser as such. The program ships with Bridge, which is a separate application. Bridge generates its own previews and thumbnails in the background. If your machine is low on resources, this can sometimes take a while particularly for large files.
Turning on "Maximize Compatibility" in PS preferences can help.
If by "browser" you mean Windows Explorer, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck. PS7 was the last version to create thumbnails that could appear in Explorer. Then came XP and a conflict which caused data loss, so the thumbnail-creating DLL psicon.dll was dropped in the tow most recent versions.
Chris, I think Stuart is using "browser" to refer to Bridge, which replaced CS’s file browser.
Stuart, assuming I’m correct in that assumption, the generic thumbnail should not be displaying instead of the image unless Bridge hasn’t yet created its cache for the directory in question. It’s possible your Bridge cache may be corrupted. Try deleting the cache, and it will be rebuilt to display the most recent version of your images. Building the cache takes a while, so the best way to go is, one evening, go to the topmost level of your image file hierarchy, and rebuild the entire cache by clicking on Tools > Cache > Build Cache for Subfolders.
Dear Chris and Michael. Thank you for your comments. Reading between the lines in your messages, I realized that I was using the wrong language. I opened "Browse" and found myself in Bridge together with my images. I was under the misapprehension that Bridge was to be utilized only with raw files. I had been trying to access my files with the "Open" command. I just graduated from Elements 2. Thank you again and for your contribution to my learning curve.
File > Open works just fine if you know what you are looking for. To see the images and do serious browsing, use Bridge. It also lets you do batch actions and lots of other things. It uses a cache to display the thumbnails and previews, and creating these for the first time takes a while, so try my suggestion about building the cache. Do it at night, go to sleep, and afterward Bridge will be much faster because it won’t have to build the previews on the fly.
