imagecreatefromgif

The version of php that I use states that Gif Support is enabled. And in fact I am able to create and display gif images. However when it comes to creating an image from a file the imagecreatefromgif function doesn't seem to work. I'll qualify doesn't work to mean a broken image icon is displayed when I try to use this function. I don't know of a way to display error messages yet. Also there are no other graphic formats supported in the gd section of my phpinfo() report so I am assuming jpeg, wbmp and png can't be used. I've read many posts and am aware of the problems with gif support, regarding the fact that gif isn't supported in certain versions of php. Since I have been able to create gifs using imagecreate() I'm a little puzzled about using imagecreatefromgif() I also found in the posts the idea of using the fread() function which works well to display my gif. Unfortunately what I want to do is annotate the gif before I display it. Any comments welcome. Chris