Thursday, December 26, 2013

Blocking advertisements with Firefox

Don't you just hate it when your page blows up with ads, pop-up ads, and all those flash video ads? Well, there is a great solution for Mozilla Firefox users out there Called Adblock Plus. That Adblock Plus does is prevent the ads from loading on your page, presenting a cleaner less contested look on your page. Just on Google search pages, the entire right hand column is gone as they are all advertisements that are paid for if you use AdBlock Plus, without it, you will see countless numbers of advertisements there. That is just one example.


Firefox with Adblock disabled for a Google search for dog food
Social Networking sites are littered with ads as well. Some of these ads can have malicious content. My Experience working in a cooperate environment shows that people often click on ads accidentally and they can have malicious content resulting in virus infection of your machine. I have analyzed countless machines Internet history and traced an infection to an advertisement of some kind that sneaks through with malicious content. So, this can also help protect you in ways that you might not have though of.

Firefox with Adblock enabled for a Google search for dog food

Preforming a Google search for ' add-ons ' and the first results yields the Mozilla Fireflx add-on page. Off to the left click on ' popular ' and its the very first add-on on the list. All you have to do is install it from there.

There will be a little stop sign in the lower right corner of your page. That's where it lives by default. You can also go into the Firefox menus and under options then toolbar layout you can drag that icon somewhere else like up top somewhere . Mine actually lives in the upper right corner of the page, thus allowing me to close the add-on bar.

The Adblock Plus direct link is here.

Best Regards to all

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Disable protected mode in Adobe Flash player with a script the easy way



I have created a script to disable protected mode in Adobe Flash Player for either 64 bit or 32 bit version so people don't have to go in and fiddle with operating system files as that does sometimes resolve the issue of flash player crashing. The script is automated and smart enough to let you know if you have protected mode enabled or not. It will detects if you are on a 64 bit version of windows or 32 bit version. It will detect if the mms.cfg file exists or not in the directory. The script will also tell you if you need to get Flash player installed as well.

If you need Adobe Flash Player installed on your system, simply go here: Get Adobe Flash Player . Please be sure to UNCHECK the McAfee as that is just additional BLOAT in my opinion.


Here are few more articles concerning disable protected mode in Flash player ( Adobe site article )  

All you have to do is click the link below, and the script will open up in readable form in case you want to see what it does and how it does it. When you are ready just up at the top click download, and then run it. NOTE: You might have to right click and run as admin if you get any permission or access denied, i cannot resolve these issues

 Disable Protect Mode script 

If this issue does not resolve your Mozilla Firefox crashing Flash Player then you can check out my other Blog for additional fixes. HERE

YouTube video tutorial

Please note that i can provide limited technical support for this. This particular script is self-explanatory. 


NEVER INSTALL FLASH PLAYER MANUALLY AGAIN

Be sure to Check out my other post for complete uninstall, clean up of all flash files, and re-install from a script. http://adobeflashcleanup.blogspot.com/


Best Regards

Sunday, December 22, 2013

How to fix flash player crashes in Firefox by deleting certain prefetch files



In attempt to find a solution to the flash player constantly crashing Mozilla Firefox, I believe I have come up with a solution for some users. As you know flash player crashes within Mozilla Firefox are overwhelmingly common, and nobody is attempting to think outside the box for a solution. I have found two solutions that I can confirm will work for users experiencing crashing after using Firefox and flash player for a period of time. This fix will NOT work for everyone. Users experiencing crash upon start for Firefox and flash player will not most likely work for that issue, but please feel free to try. 
Get Adobe flash player here . Please be sure to UNCHECK the McAfee as that is just additional BLOAT in my opinion.

Keep selected prefetch files clear:
The first solution I came up with involves creation of a task in windows 7/8 that upon regular intervals deletes some prefetch files in the windows prefetch directory. This was my method that I used to solve my flash player crashes in Firefox and have used it successfully since mid 2013. I have created a shareable folder with some automated scripts, a readme file, and an undo bat file (to remove my scripts) to assist in the proper creation of the task, and the necessary files to perform the deletion of the 3 prefetch files. There are two exe for this, both do the same thing. One is created in WINRAR SFX EXE and the other in AUTOIT either will work. Those links to the complete folder will be at the bottom of my page with the Info version of it which you should read first. 

Direct links to first (winrar exe ) and second (autoIT installer Updated 2/3/2014 ) ones for quick reference.

July 22 2016 - UPDATE:

I will not be currently supporting this method anymore. No future development.
If you are having plugin crashes, I suggest that you use the 64 bit version of Mozilla Firefox as it is much more stable than the 32 bit versions of it. Of course if you are one of the many unfortunate people with a 32 bit operating system, then maybe it is time to move into the modern day of technology. 64 bit systems have been around for over 7 years, and started to become popular after the windows 7 release in 2009. 

August 16 2014 - UPDATE:

1) 64 bit version update ONLY 1.4 here ( its already checked, hit the download button at the top). I will only be programming for 64 bit windows only going forward. The code has been added on github. the link is a few lines down in the highlighted section
2) I added some logic in the installer to create a folder structure withing the 'programdata/scripts' folder as i will be using the scripts folder for more projects
3) Added some conditional if statements into the installer to verify the install of the files and task 
4) Changed the xml file to reflect the changes in 1 above.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 September 14th  2014 - UPDATE:

This will most likely be my last update in this series as I found a simply way to do this without creating a windows task to run this every 5 minutes, and it was so simple to do.

1) 64 bit version 2.0 only. 
2) This is an exe that you double click, or place in the windows start up folder. This will delete prefetch files as they are created; well every 30 seconds. This is a low resource exe and should not hinder your CPU.
3) will show as a red cross in the system tray. 

This is based off the actual exe that does the deleting of the prefetch files in my original iteration, with the program running in a infinite loop and using ' IF THEN ' statements to confirm the existence of said files and if so deleting them.

The files in the prefetch that are deleted are: 
1)PLUGIN-CONTAINER*.pf
2)flashpl*.pf
3)firefox*.pf
4)FLASHPLAYERUPDATESERVICE*.pf
5)PLUGIN-HANG*.pf
6)SILVERLIGHT*.pf

The download for the V2.0 file is here. Simply click the download button at the top as it is already checked for you.

December 27 2014 UPDATE: 

To those of you who would like to test this out in a bat file format, i created a BAT file so YOU can see the code as I get harassment from Mozilla Forum moderators about my creative thinking and refuse to even consider these solutions, let alone test them. Talk about incompetence!  Once or IF you n't want to see the CMD window all the time, you can grab the exe, or the source code and compile it yourself if you as paranoid as they are. 

Feel free to to test/submit any of my code at https://www.virustotal.com/ or wherever to really see if it is malicious

Download the BAT file here

June 12 2015 UPDATE: 

Updated the Auto Delete version to 2.5 to include less CPU usage by about 30%, the icon in the system try will display green if it has not deleted anything, and will turn to a red cross if something was deleted. NO tool tip. Removed the pause/exit script if you click on it and put an about/exit instead.

Version 2.5 can be found here

STEP BY STEP:

1) go to this page: 

Flash clean up and re-install

2) Read it, and determine which method you choose to use

3) You can use the exe file listed in the September update above or the BAT file in the most recent update.

4) Simply double click and run 

THIS DOES NOT INSTALL A WINDOWS TASK AS THE OLDER VERSIONS DID. 

You can stop it anytime by going to the system tray clicking on the red cross icon, and choose Exit. 
NOTE: the script will pause once you click it, and you have to hit pause again to get it to stop flashing ' pause '. 

I will put up another version with a 'hot key set ' to stop it as well in the near future.


The code can be found here

=================================================================




IMPORTANT NOTE: IF you use full screen gaming, then you must use the second link ( right above this sentense) for the one written in AUTOIT, as a compiled exe does the deletions. as you will be booted from fullscreen mode b/c of the .vbs script that does the deletions in the first link. 

This Will also not work on computers attached to a domain. it will error out 
The version V2.0 will work as it does not create a task.


The code for all the AutoBeta installer and associated files is located here

It is important to note, that now the source code is available I will be only making updates to the 2FireFox-Flash-Fix(x86)_autoBeta installers. 
The 1Firefox_1Flash_FIX(x86) version will remain available but any additions or code modifications will not be done to it.

I would like to point out that a thread was started called:

"Proposed new solution to some FlashPlayer problems”

In the Mozilla forums which involved contributors and moderators. Needless to say the moderators and contributors refused to do any testing of my proposed solution. As the vast majority of users want a click and fix solution, and do not want to sit and fiddle with code, and do things they cannot understand because they are not computer literate. I offer at the bottom of page a few links to Mozilla forums where proof of my methods can resolve these issues.

Flash player protected mode: Automated script to disable protected mode for flash player

Disable plugin container in an attempt to resolve the flash player crashes if clearing prefetch files do not work.(Mozilla recently broke this method of disabling the plugin-container)


I would like to give a special thanks to the following Mozilla forum members for assisting me in confirming my testing and willing to try my methods:

7246291


mgenoves


Sonoko


Datamaniak


Also thanks to Adobe forum member Troudhyl. Even though either method or various other methods we tried didn’t work for his flash player crash upon startup of some links, this helped me to confirm what it didn’t resolve for sure.

Below is the link for the folder with the proposed fixes, and please be sure to read the info.txt file prior please. You will need winrar to open the archive files. http://www.rarlab.com/


YouTube tutorial

Please note that i can provide limited technical support for these. There is the info word document available to read. I tried to make this a simple as possible. Please be sure to read these.

Best Regards to all


LINK TO FOLDER FOR FIXES 

Here are some links to my proven cases of persons who have tried my methods:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/981705

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/981332

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/980349

 

NEVER INSTALL FLASH PLAYER MANUALLY AGAIN

Be sure to Check out my other post for complete uninstall, clean up of all flash files, and re-install from a script. http://adobeflashcleanup.blogspot.com/