Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with firefox and xp

Firefox has a mind of it's own.

daHIFI — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:47:24 -0800

Why does Firefox randomly break out one of my tabs in a new window? I usually keep several tabs opened at once, and since the 3.5 update I've been having problems, either when switching between windows or tabs, even sometimes when I'm placing the cursor in a text box. It doesn't happen every day but it's annoying the hell out of me. I thought it might be some kind of keyboard shortcut or some unknown mouse gesture that's doing it. So far my google-fu has failed me.

Using FF on WinXP

Any ideas?

Help me avoid reloading my Vostro 1700 XP image!!!!

littleredwagon — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:51:02 -0800

Both latest IE and Firefox are hanging. I get the following two errors in Event Viewer Application Log: 1. Application Hang Hanging application firefox.exe, version 1.9.0.3188, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000. 2. Fault bucket 943649184. I've run chkdsk...defrag...Dell diagnostics on memory and system. Nothing is jumping out. I've even run Ccleaner, nothing fixes this issue. My google-fu is failing me... Any ideas?

XP Filter: I set up a non admin account for safer computing -- Am I safe enough now?

dancestoblue — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:06:12 -0800

I've read so much here lately 1 2 3 about not browsing as an admin, decided to check it out and yepper, I surely was using an admin account. I've set up a non admin account, made a few other changes (described inside), hoping to find out from The Hive Mind if I am now safe enough to breathe easy(er). Ya'll put the fear of computer death into me, I finally decided to check and yeah, I was doing it wrong wrong wrong. So I set about trying to get my mind (and puter) right in the eyes of The Hive Mind.

I set up an account without Admin rights, and will use this for most everything from now on.

I left both accounts without passwords because of reading this post -- is this a good plan, or is this guy off the wall?

I am using a fairly fresh XP install (maybe two months) and I'm pretty sure I'm still clean -- I've run Spybot and AdAware, updated as needed, maybe every couple weeks.

I'm using AVG Anti-Virus Free and update it as it says it's needed.

I'm using the ZoneAlarm free firewall -- I LOVE that it allows me to determine when software decides to 'call home' and I get to decide -- Apple is pretty determined with this, I've found, and so is Open Office, a few others.

I've got Windows Auto Update turned on but not to auto download and install -- I want it to prompt me and let me decide if and when.

I'm using MS Windows Defender and upgrading as it suggests.

I'm using Firefox 3 upgraded automatically any time they suggest, and running AdBlock Plus and NoScript, updated when suggested.

If any site gives me problems in Firefox, I first try Opera (updated as needed) and then IE7, last resort. I run IE Tab through Firefox rather than firing up IE7, and I only use it on sites that demand IE7 (NetFlix, Sprint, a couple of others) -- I'm hoping this helps me but I don't actually know if it adds safety or not. I update IE7 as Windows Update suggests, pretty sure I'm always current.

I'm using Foxit PDF rather than Adope bloatware.

"Aye" suggested Disabliing all AutoRun and AutoPlay options with TweakUI (a Microsoft PowerToy) is this needed/wanted?

What have I missed? Where have I gone overboard? I want safety but don't want to live locked down so hard I cannot move.

Thanx in advance.

Peace.

dancestoblue

Google in Internet Explorer but not Firefox?

AdamOddo — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:13:23 -0800

Google search problems here. I've asked around the local tech circle and no one can think up an explanation for this one. Google will load in FF and IE7 - but - I can only execute a search from IE. I'm running XP with the latest final of FF. I have Google as an exemption, so I know it's not a problem with cookies. I've also ran Spybot and Adaware, and both came up clean. Google pings with zero packet loss. This one has got me baffled.

Weird Lines in Firefox

edbyford — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:40:48 -0800

Strange lines/boxes appear in Firefox when scrolling or mousing over web items Firefox problem

Above is a picture of the problem I am having with Firefox. it seems that lines have started appearing when i mouse over certain objects (buttons, links, some pictures and when I type. For example, right now a line is appearing underneath this sentence. Also when I scroll down a page lines appear on the parts where I have scrolled past.

Has anyone come across this problem before? Any solutions?

I have tried turning on/off Caret Browsing.

I am running Win XP SP2 and Firefox v 2.0.0.8.

Sit, Firefox! Stay.... good boy.

like_neon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:24:33 -0800

Firefox keeps disappearing from my task bar. When I minimize Firefox the application disappears from the task bar. It only happens sometimes and it's only when I minimize the window. However, if I run Task manager I see that it's still running and I can select it to bring the browser back (and it reappears in the task bar). Anyone know what's going on here? It's only Firefox (v 2.0.0.5, it's done this in a previous version as well) and this is on an XP machine.

I want my Firefox!

trip and a half — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:35:36 -0800

Why is Firefox so sluggish on my laptop? I love Firefox. I use it at work. I used to use it at home on my old desktop (which died).

In September of last year, I bought a shiny new Asus laptop which I absolutely love. But every time I've tried to download and use Firefox on it, the response time has been frustrating to the point where I've uninstalled it.

What's going on? I have to wait ten seconds or more each time I click anything before the browser will respond. Often the title bar has the Windows "not responding" message in it.

Any ideas? I'm running Windows XP Home. Save me from IE!

Drivecleaner virus and firefox. Why is drivecleaner stalking me?

fox_terrier_guy — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:42:30 -0800

Firefox and disk cleaner virus - not sure if I have the virus or not.... I have firefox 2.0.0.4, avisoft antivirus, and zonealarm on my work and home PCs and all software is up to date. Regardless, I seem to have contracted the diskcleaner virus. On both computers, it behaves exactly the same way; that is, the disk cleaner pop up comes up in the lower right hand corner of my screen, and when I close it via the "X", firefox closes. I don't want to click anywhere else on the window for obvious reasons.

When Firefox is restarted, it has a new window size. I got it thru Stumbleupon. (www.stumbleupon.com)

I've googlefu'd the groups and can't find any reason why it is happening. Symantec among others says to reboot in to safe mode, do a regedit, etc., etc., and I have done that, but I don't have the same reg keys that the article says, and I don't have a Diskcleaner directory on my drive. In other words, I seem to have the symptoms, but not the disease.

At work, I am behind a firewall, and at home my wireless router connected by cable.

My Mac laptop doesn't have this problem.

So, do I have the virus or not? Is there a definitive source of info on this? This is starting to piss me off.

Thanks in advance.

The learning curve to switch to Firefox from IE6

orlin — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:12:23 -0800

How much work will it take me to change from IE6 to Firefox? Looking at the list of problems in AMF, should a person not highly computer literate make the change? I use XP and have MS office installed and am now learning to write web pages -- CSS, HTML, Java.. Thanks in advance for your advice.

Why is my computer suddenly grumpy, slow, and generally uncooperative?

chefscotticus — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:22:14 -0800

Why is my computer suddenly grumpy, slow, and generally uncooperative? In the past week or so, my 4 year old Dell Inspirion notebook has suddenly decided it doesn't much like me anymore and is doing it's best to get me to toss it in frustration.

It's been extremely well maintained (frequent spy/adware/virus scans, careful downloading, frequently cleaned out registry, etc), but the past few days have seen suddenly high loads on the processor, freezing, and a corrupted Firefox profile. The hard drive is just over a year old (though only has ~2GB free). Specifically, my Moz Firefox and Thunderbird have been especially sluggish, and both (with 5 loaded tabs doing nothing) are often using 100% of my 2GHz CPU (or combining with TB for 100%). Ad-Aware, Norton Anti-virus, CCleaner Registry Cleaner, and XP "scan disk" have all been run to no avail. Restarting helps, but only for a little while. Memory is 512MB, and has been enough -- system was working beatifully until recently.

Some ideas: Could CCleaner have deleted some needed Registry items by accident? I have been using uTorrent a little bit of late -- can viruses/spyware be embedded in .AVI files? Could the hard-drive be starting to fail, and are there any programs I can download that can tell me if this is inevitable? Could it be a FF/TB problem, or something with one of my many extensions?

> > > I guess what I am really asking for is suggestions for other tools to help diagnose the problem (or other suggestions). What programs out there might be able to help?

Thanks MeFi.

Help me filter the porn!

dance — Sun, 28 May 2006 15:35:55 -0800

For my work, I've been asked to prevent a client's son from browsing porn on the family computer without spending money on NetNanny style products. I confess to encountering some difficulty. I have set Win XP to use the MVPS hosts file and tried a couple of free porn filters but have come up against a brick wall. Help me! Further info:

The free porn filter I tried was useless. It was poorly engineered and though it promised operation at the TCP/IP layer, it was only able to (poorly) filter Internet Explorer traffic. I need FireFox filtering, too.

One idea I had was routing all requests through a Squid proxy running on a dedicated server? Would that work?

Is Windows Media Player causing popups?

Brian James — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:06:42 -0800

How do I stop popups that appear when Windows Media Player is running? I do not in general have a popup problem. The only time I get popups is when Windows Media Player is playing a feed off the web, or if it is playing an embedded video in a web page. I do not get popups at any other time. (I have Quicktime set up to play, in Firefox, almost all video streams it can; I only use Windows Media for wmv and so forth)

In the Security tab, I see a setting that may be relevant called "Do not run script commands and rich media streams if the player is running inside a web page" that is checked. Windows XP automatic updates is enabled and up-to-date.

I use Firefox 1.5.0.3, I scan for spyware/popups regularly with Windows Defender, Ad-Aware, and Ewido. Running version 10 of Windows Media.

IE doesn't display gifs, but FireFox and Safari have no problem.

Wild_Eep — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 09:35:07 -0800

WebDevFilter: Why do some gifs GIFs *not* appear in Windows/IE, but do appear in Win/FireFox Mac/Safari and Mac/FireFox? Specific example inside. The site I'm working on seems to appear just fine in 3 browsers, but not in IE for Windows. I get white boxes with red x's in them instead of the gifs I expect.

This output was given to me from an export from Quark XPress, which produced the CSS. I'm a CSS newbie (but I understand the concepts).

Google returns a boatload of results, mostly relating to making changes to the registry and deleting temporary files. Before I do anything that drastic, could I have another set of eyes look over my code?

Dear God, Don't Let Me Use IE!

kungfujoe — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 04:28:37 -0800

Attention all Firefox experts! Please help. This morning, I came in, and my beloved Firefox (1.04) will no longer display text! (DIT) Ok, here's the deal. For some reason, my work machine, loaded with corporate crap, antivirus, firewall, etc... decided I no longer need to see test in Firefox. It's beyond frustrating. I've tried re-installing, but no dice.

Any ideas what I can try to get Firefox working again? FWIW, I'm running XP Corp, SP2, etc...

Thanks!

Internet connection problem

Mayor Curley — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:37:35 -0800

Internet connection problem. Odd circumstances. Knowledgeable people are invited inside to tell me that I'm missing something obvious. A friend's computer sits behind a router and receives cable internet. Her computer suddenly stopped being able to connect to the internet at all. She called Comcast, and they blamed malware.

She brought the computer to her boyfriend's house, where I saw it. We hooked it up to his router/cable modem, and indeed it wouldn't connect. I just suggested a clean install (of XP Home) rather than chase down all the problems. She agreed.

The install went well, I installed Firefox and it connected fine. She took the computer home, and it worked great for an hour. Now it won't connect through the router. If she connects directly to her modem, she can access the internet.

I'd be inclined to say that the router's gone bad, except that she had her boyfriend's spare machine at her apartment for a week and it worked fine. And when I first saw it and it wouldn't connect, it was behind a router as well.

Is there some condition that would cause the computer to not function behind a router, assuming that the network settings weren't changed by the users and no additional software had been installed after it was clean? Or should I chalk the other computer's functioning to coincidence and blame the D-link? I don't want to go out to Charlestown to monkey with this thing.

Why has my Firefox slowed down?

zorro astor — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 08:49:14 -0800

Why has my Firefox slowed down? It started a few day ago. Sometimes it takes several minutes for a page to load. Some only partially load, then stop. Some don't load at all. Not every page is this way, but I'd say about 20% suffer from one of these problems. IE is zipping right along though. I did a virus check, ran Spy-bot and Ad-Aware and cleaned up my registry. Yet the problem persists. Oh, I'm running 1.0 and XP Pro.

Do I have to install Windows XP Service Pack 2 now?

Blue Stone — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 05:27:59 -0800

I was going to hold off installing XP Service Pack 2 for a few months. Whilst I use Firefox rather than IE6, the jpeg vulnerability is listed as affecting XP itself. Do I really need to installing it as soon as possible? Is everyone else installing SP2 now?

Firefox opening twice in two identical windows

nylon — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:24:44 -0800

Eudora + Firefox + XP: every time I launch a link from within an email, Firefox opens it twice in two identical windows, and I also get a blank IE window. Needless to say, I just want one version of the link. In Firefox.
Spybot, Adaware, Hijackthis and AVG show nothing untoward on my system. Anyone else get this?

Is Microsoft's service pack messing with Firefox pop-up blocker?

LairBob — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:08:41 -0800

MS Conspiracy Filter: Just installed XP SP2--which adds "pop-up blocking" to IE--and all of a sudden the pop-up blocking feature built into Firefox turns off every time I restart the app. Is anyone else seeing this? [little bit more inside] It's almost giving MS too much credit, so I'm not really thinking this was done on purpose, but it almost seems like too neat of a coincidence to just be chance. I wouldn't be surprised if they big-footed some kind of registry entry or something by making believe Firefox doesn't exist.

I'm certain of the timing...I use Firefox all day, every day, and I haven't seen pop-ups for months now. I installed SP2 two days ago, and all of a sudden, every time I start Firefox, the "Block Pop-ups" check box is off. This is really annoying, and I'm trying to figure out whether it's a weird bug with my specific system, or more widespread.