After installing new image, why router keeps 'decompressing'?

Question

I found similar posts but they say this could be due to oversized images. It doesn't seem to be my case. My router memory count below shows I have 64D,16F as shown on the bottom of the pasted info below, isn't that correct ?
I downloaded an image from cisco.com for my C2610. I loaded the image onto the router via rommon/TFTP.
Then I noticed that every time I power cycle the C2610, I get the message "self decompressing....".
I made sure that the respective image I am trying to load, the 'c2600-j1s3-mz.123-16.bin' is supported by 64D and 16F routers. Note that is originally an image for 2610XM routers, however, before I downloaded an image for C2610 version 12.3 which also presented same problem.
Note that router was functional before I did this image download exercise.
Please advise what could be wrong and how I can get rid of this annoying 'decompressing' messages every time I start up router.
Router(config)#config register -register 0x2102
Router(config)#
Router#wri m
*Mar 1 00:08:37.904: %SYS-5-CONFIG_I: Configured from console by consoleem
Building configuration...
[OK]
Router#
System Bootstrap, Version 11.3(2)XA4, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Copyright (c) 1999 by cisco Systems, Inc.
TAC:Home:SW:IOS:Specials for info
C2600 platform with 65536 Kbytes of main memory
program load complete, entry point: 0x80008000, size: 0xf427d8
Self decompressing the image : ################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################## [OK]
Smart Init is enabled
smart init is sizing iomem
ID MEMORY_REQ TYPE
000091 0X0008B800 C2600 single Ethernet
0X00098670 public buffer pools
0X00211000 public particle pools
TOTAL: 0X00334E70
If any of the above Memory Requirements are
"UNKNOWN", you may be using an unsupported
configuration or there is a software problem and
system operation may be compromised.
Rounded IOMEM up to: 4Mb.
Using 6 percent iomem. [4Mb/64Mb]
Restricted Rights Legend
Use, duplication, or disclosure by the Government is
subject to restrictions as set forth in subparagraph
(c) of the Commercial Computer Software - Restricted
Rights clause at FAR sec. 52.227-19 and subparagraph
(c) (1) (ii) of the Rights in Technical Data and Computer
Software clause at DFARS sec. 252.227-7013.
cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, California 95134-1706
Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software
IOS (tm) C2600 Software (C2600-J1S3-M), Version 12.3(16), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc4)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2005 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Tue 23-Aug-05 17:45 by ssearch
Image text-base: 0x80008098, data-base: 0x81A2BE04
cisco 2610 (MPC860) processor (revision 0x300) with 61440K/4096K bytes of memory.
Processor board ID JAD054809DU (1862059776)
M860 processor: part number 0, mask 49
Bridging software.
X.25 software, Version 3.0.0.
TN3270 Emulation software.
1 Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface(s)
1 Serial network interface(s)
32K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.
16384K bytes of processor board System flash (Read/Write)

Answer 1

Hi,
you can unzip the image using gzip or any other ZIP program (on a MS PC rename it to *.zip). It contains the "real" binary, which is about 2-3 times larger. Never tried to boot directly, but in principle this should also work. Just be aware, that the unzipped IOS might not fit into flash anymore.
Hope this helps! Please rate all posts.
Regards, Martin