Please enable the tickbox of "Disable GIF/JIF/APNG/ANI animation" under Settings>View and then after load an animated gif from 'recent files' and you will see that this setting is not working as it should which is to have no playback of animation.
Oh ok, so the problem is if I load from 'recent file' or drag n drop. The setting works properly if I load the animated file from the Browser.
Ok, so this bug need only fixing for animated files:
loaded from 'recent files'
loaded from 'drag n drop'
maybe--> loaded from standard windows method
this should be a straightforward fix then

MP 0.38.7 - win xp sp1