getting rid of flash
 

some of you will remember me from before. i have seizures triggered by flicker, and the posters here have for a long time been solving my problems.

i have everything possible turned off in my browser. graphics. colors. fonts. everything.

except flash.

while the forum was down i got a new computer. XP. for many strange reasons i don't have complete backups. went to the forum to look up how to turn off flash and prevent it from redownloading and of course no forum.

so would someone please tell me how to prevent flash? i think it involved changing a security certificate but am not about to do that without very clear instructions. also i can't figure out where to uninstall flash.

would very much appreciate your help. didn't realize how much i depended on your guys until you weren't there.

Hi Annie :)

I found a flash uninstaller program and to make it easier to find I put it up on my site :)

http://www.thunder65.com/annie/unins...ash_player.exe

Make sure nothing is running when you use the installer (only explorer.exe should be running). Might want to boot into safe mode then run the uninstaller.

Also there is a registry fix to implement (not sure if it's needed after the uninstaller is done) that I'll post if the uninstaller doesn't do everything you need it to do :)

thanks again, as always
 

where would i be without you?

i don't do the registry. no matter what i do not make changes in the registry.

i just tried right clicking on a flash at yahoo and discovered some settings. i set the amount of space flash is allowed to use on my hard drive (WHAT!!!! just precisely how did it get permission to do this?) to zero and that seems to have killed it. but i do remember that it was able before to override my settings, so i better go get your uninstaller.

will let you know.

in xp you should be able to just disable the addon for flash.

Tools > Manage Add-ons > Click show add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer from the drop down box > Highlight Shockwave Flash Object > click the disable radio button on the bottom > click ok.

Changes take effect next time you open IE.

followed your excellent directions i hope. closed all IE, reopened, there i was, merryly clicking around in yahoo news and admiring the empty boxes where flash used to be while typing a reply to you in another window. and the computer froze. mouse didn't work. keyboard didn't work. ctrl alt del didn't work. finally turned off at switch, waited 20 sec, rebooted. did not go back to yahoo.

i did get a yellow bubble message at yahoo that i didn't notice until it left because i was typing in another window. did it want something?

now i am fine, but i haven't been to any site but here.

what did i do wrong?

i was really lost without being able to ask you for help. XP is not 98, and i still think in DOS. but XP does run my favorite DOS program, so not all is bad.

Annie, it could just be that yahoo choked and your reboot may have cured it.

In Tools > IE Options > Advanced > Browsing > uncheck install on demand IE and other. That should cause IE to ignore what the site thinks you need to view it.

I'm using Zone Alarmn 6 now, and I know when I have ad blocking or mobile control settings to high in ZA, surfing is a pita on some sites, because they just don't want to function at all unless you give them carte blanche to control your viewing. I refuse to go to those sites.

I would give yahoo another try though. You never know.

ps - yeah it could have. Alot of times when I lockup there is a dialog box in the background that was the cause of the freeze up.

You can go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer and browse through the logs for errors that happened around that time. Not foolproof, because the information is limited, but it's sometimes helpful.

this didn't quote the quote, it used to.

in any event, that event viewer is fun. didn't know about it before.

there are two yellow flags around the time the lockup happened. both of them say that memory was being used and not freed up. i assume that this is when i turned off the computer at its on off switch.

nothing before the flags said anything to me.

after the flags they are trying to run setup manager. no that is not it either, that is the next morning. the flag is the last thing i get while shutting down. two nights in a row. i think i shut down all programs before i shut down, maybe i need to give them more time.

so there is a lot more information there than i understand. but nothing that jumps out at me.

uncheck install on demand IE was already unchecked, unchecked other.

went back to yahoo news and poked around, including the link that locked me last night. no problem. so either one of the changes i just made solved it or yahoo solved it or the internet pixies solved it.

i have all sorts of stuff turned off. colors, fonts, animations, pictures. some sites don't have alt tags and i can't manage them at all. i tend to write them pointed letters. sometimes people write me back thanking me.

someday i will get the vbulletin people to size their alt tags, which is my main problem currently with this forum and any forum that uses the vbulletin software..

my experience has been that if a site is so poorly designed that i can't use it it doesn't have any useful content anyway.

some years ago the about.com page on writing html pages for persons with disabilities had a flash ad on it. i actually got it taken off.

so you seem to have solved my problems of the moment and made internet surfing a much safer experience for me. i very much appreciate your help.

locked myself up again.

was on forum feedback and clicked on one of your links. instant lockup. did not open another window, and i think that is what is happening. IE is trying to open another window and winds up in a loop.

i did not knowingly turn this off but seem to have.

help!

well i certainly am finding many instances of this, whatever it is.

was on hotmail, on IE not Outlook Express because hotmail put a real message in the bulk mail folder. and everything was fine until i signed out and let it go to the main page. and then i locked again.

i think what i did wrong is tell it to use zero percent of the hard drive because that is something i did myself with no research at all. now i can't get back into wherever i was to change it, right clicked on an ad and changed it there but now i don't get flash ads to right click on.

am i doomed?

have i just formed a new chapter on this new forum of stupid computer actions?

Hiyas Annie :)

Hmmm, it sounds more like your system resources are full and nothing to due with allowing flash zero percentage of your hard drive.

When you lock up can you do the Ctrl+Alt+Del dance? If so what's listed as running in the box?

i agree with ZS. It sounds unrelated to flash.

you said you have a new computer....it probably has bloatware on there installed by the vendor.


You could run ad-aware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ and see what crapware it finds.

Also go into CP > Admin Tools > Services > scroll down to Messenger and make sure it is disabled. If it's on automatic, double click it and choose disable from teh drop down box. You can also click the stop button to stop it.

I'd check for spyware and poke around start > run > msconfig > startup tab to see what is loading on startup that you don't need.

Worse comes to worse, if those ideas don't pan out, either ZS or I can do a remote assistance on your computer while online through XP and have a look around at some areas that might be causing it.

nope, the three fingered salute does not work. i lose mouse, keyboard, alt tab, ctrl alt del. the only thing that works is the on/off button and i worry that is going to stop working.

the reason i think it is the zero percent is because it started right after i did it.

how can my resources be full? i just got the thing and have almost nothing loaded. grrr.

first thing i downloaded, i have actually learned something from you. there was nothing hum a week ago, will rerun.


can't find messenger in that list but it is in the right task bar. (task bar? the thingie at the bottom unless i mess it up) i tried to uninstall this and couldn't, will never ever use it. mouseover message is "not signed in"


next project.


really makes me happy to have you covering my back. will go mess around and let you know.

thanks for being there.

no problem.

Messenger is there in Services. You must have missed it. It's the messenger service, not MS Messenger instant messenger over near your clock.

Go back into control panel > administrative tools > Services...

it will look like this:


tell me what the status is. auto, manual, disabled?

Ok we can reverse the zero percentage bit. The temp chat rooms I set up are empty so there won't be any smilies being used, but there is a background image.

I will PM you the link to the chats and a login name and pw so you don't have to register ;)

If you can, log into the chat rooms and right click your mouse. Select settings, and change the hd space to 2%.

Ugh...Dorry just reminded me...you'll have to enable flash to get into the chats.

Tools > Manage add ons > click the drop down
thingie > highligh Macromedia flash or something like that > enable > ok

aha. found it. tho i might point out here that this is the woman with all graphics turned off, so it doesn't help me to post a screen shot.

messenger is disabled.

but the reason i disabled it in the first place is because it triggers my seizures.

now the truly weird thing is that the whole problem seems to have gone away. the pixies don't work on sunday?

had a friend over and was trying to show her what was wrong. did exactly the same things that i did when the problem first surfaced and nothing happened. nothing. no lock up. no weirdness. no nothing.

was certain that as soon as she left everything would go nuts but it hasn't so far.

another odd thing is that the google toolbar, which had disappeared, has reappeared. i was trying to get it to show and when i clicked on view > toolbars > google the norton toolbar would show instead. so maybe that was it?

maybe i imagined the whole thing?

or maybe it was what usually causes all my computer problems, the evil aligators.

we will see what happens tomorrow.

hey whatever :) Sounds like IE got unstuck on stupid. It happens.

Glad it's working good now.

So Annie it is now tomorrow and we're wondering how the puter is behaving.

no alligators so far. have not been on most of the day, first day of class.

still have the google toolbar, that disappeared about the time the problem started.

am clicking around on yahoo news, which crashed me before, no problem.

clearly you were right and the zero percentage didn't cause the problem.

so who knows. the last couple of changes dorry had me to make may have needed a good shutdown and cold boot to take effect and work.

in 98 a bad shutdown gave me the fixing it screen. in XP it doesn't seem to care if it is shut down properly or not?

also, when i turn on this computer it doesn't beep. i have volume turned off, but shouldn't it beep anyway? the 98 monitor thunked and then the computer beeped, so i could follow its progress. now no beep, no thunk.

in other news, have discovered that if a neighbor points at the new monitor screen with a long fingernail and scratches it, using the keyboard brush to brush cathair off of the monitor eliminates the scratches. and that i should put the screen cover back on before i allow anyone else to use my computer.

so looks like dorry fixed it, or scared it away. i surely was glad to have you guys back, i really panicked!

Don't know about that, but new computers definitely need tweaking to clean out the gremlins. Every vendor is different. That's why I love zone alarm. On a new computer, you find out as soon as you go online which services to disable and what vendor installed junk wants to phone home.

looks like i need to add zone alarm. i don't want to learn all this stuff. why can't a compter be as easy to use as a refrigerator? whine whine whine.

this computer came from comp usa, mail order. excellent service.

what i haven't done yet is check the startup menu. sigh.

original crisis was that i took the 98 in to have the cat hair cleaned out. i don't do the registry and i don't open the case. unfortunately something happened to my usb ports and i couldn't use my external cd to back up. then i got really sick and didn't deal with anything for a year. the friend who helps me with computers, and who built the 98 as a student, announced that the time had come to buy a new computer and found me this XP one. she told me not to bother backing up anything because she would put the old hard drive in the new machine.

unfortunately the cables or something refused to cooperate. so i have no backups for the last year, i have none of my old programs, i have backups on floppy but this doesn't have a floppy. i am going a little nuts here.

she has when she has time been zipping things off of the old drive and e mailing them to me but of course not the stuff i really need. she has two full time jobs and a life.

so when this thing got attacked by alligators i pretty much lost it. you have no idea what a comfort you are.

Annie

If you want to send the hard drive to me I will burn whatever you want onto cds and send it all back to you. I have plenty of time :)

Annie, next time you have a prob, definitely take us up on doing a remote assistance to help you. My son has and old friend out of state that is continually crashing himself, and remote assisting his computer is a heck of alot easier than emailing him back and forth to fix the prob.

It's a great tool. I don't know if ZS has tried it since he got XP, but I use it alot. Just PM me anytime you need help.

ZS - if you haven't tried remote assistance before you are welcome to login to my computer anytime and mess around with it :eek: Just shoot me a PM or email.

CSpace is awesome for RD!