So I’ve tried Chrome where I found that I consistently got DNS errors when loading pages. I refresh and it loads fine and I don’t mind the browser but it’s not Firefox.  This week I’ve been giving Safari a try, again it’s OK but not Firefox and I’ve noticed a few issues with it like accepting gifts in Facebook.  It doesn’t return you to the request page properly and when you browse back, it’s f’d up…shows incorrect tags on buttons, lists the wrong apps for buttons, etc.

Firefox never had these issues, even IE, while having more than FF, doesn’t have these little issue. So I rebuilt this past week with Windows 7, installed Firefox 3.5.1 and viola, Firefox has started having the EXACT same issues. Could it be my AT&T Uverse? Maybe, but not in the past have I noticed these issues but with Chrome. It almost seems that Firefox has made their changes for private browsing and whatever else they changed under the hood and added this annoying bug. I ended up logging into Facebook earlier using IE because it allowed me to rather than telling me there was a DNS error with Firefox for about 5 minutes straight. Oddly enough after I logged in with IE, it worked on Firefox with some delay.  Could it be Windows 7? Maybe but my laptop running FF 3.0.x has yet to show this behavior.

The newest problem seems to be with 3.5.2 and EXTREMELY slow page browsing. I load a video on YouTube and it keeps stammering as it tries to keep up. So I reset my router thinking maybe my connection was to blame (although speedtest.net didn’t seem to show it but could be lost packets somewhere) and the same thing. I tried to load the same page in IE and it works flawlessly. I’m not sure exactly what they’re doing with Firefox but it almost seems like Coke changing the formula while on top of the world. Firefox has slowly, and more recently, quickly started to make huge grounds on Internet Explorer but now at the height they seem to have stopped testing released code? I’m not sure, I’m just reporting what I’m seeing… Maybe others are seeing different results but when Facebook, Youtube and other popular sites are loading slow, it’s not good when the desktop browser is chugging along fine.

Again I’m a huge Firefox user and supporter but not if they’re trying to keep up with a fledgling browser and in the process have started to disregard the user experience. As for the testing, it’s already been published the security flaws in 3.5 so I’m wondering if this is the beginning of them being in the spotlight? What is that, now famous, quote? With great power comes great responsibility.

A while back I must have wandered into a bad, bad site. I was browsing on FireFox, checking some old bookmarks when I noticed a graphics tips site acted odd and locked up (it was also no longer what the title in my bookmarks suggested). FireFox appeared to lock up, I killed it and had to take care of something else. While I know the story is always “I didn’t install anything”, I can honestly say that all I did was go to the site which was almost immediately followed by the lockup.

Regardless, a bit later I heard talking coming from my office.  I at first thought I’d lost my mind and my dogs were having a conversation.  Luckily (or maybe not) I found there were multiple Internet Explorer 7 windows opened and I saw tasks in the system tray running and realized I got hit with something while, I assume, on that page.   I did a clean up with several adware apps, Windows Defender and did a full virus scan which gave me multiple references in my registry and files on my drive (most residing in Windows, System32 or my temp folder). I deleted the files, allowed the programs to do the cleaning process of the registry in addition to me removing a few items listed in both the local user and local machine run keys and rebooted. On reboot, my Anti-Virus reported additional files. I rebooted into safe mode (which I should have done to begin with) and did additional cleaning which rendered little additional finds.   I rebooted again and things seemed to be OK until I attempted to launch IE7 for something (which I don’t use that much). I received the message Windows cannot find ‘C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe’.   When I right clicked on the icon, it took me to the path and selected the file, so it was still intact.

A few things I tried: Restoring IE default settings, copying the Internet Explorer folder from a working XP system (thinking iexplore.exe or a dll may have been corrupted or compromised), updating to IE8, uninstalling IE7 from Add/Remove programs and reinstalling, downloading IE7 again and allowed automatic update (which still worked) to install patches and when none of this rendered results, I cursed and screamed loudly at my PC but for some reason this too didn’t resolve the issue.

I had quit worrying about it, for the most part, since it’s the system I use as a media player, storage and a utility PC for backups, etc. and don’t really browse on it.  But it was always there laughing at me, pointing at me and making fun of me!!   So tonight I painted my face, stared the monitor down and said “Prepare for war”….

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This week I found out that running Virus protection on everything Microsoft seems to be essential.  My main system was rebuilt a few months ago and I decided that I’d not install AV right away or any kind of protection.  I found out this past week that it’s not a wise move.  While I wasn’t infected with a virus or worm (typically choosing to open a document from an unknown source) I did find I had a trojan that was wreaking havoc on gaming.  I typically have issues with Unreal Tournament 3 and crashes since they can’t seem to fix the OpenAL issue that plagues the game on SoundBlaster X-Fi cards or it bounces back and forth between them and Creative.  Regardless I started having frequent crashes in Call of Duty 4 which has never happened.  I did some reading and found that people were reporting issues and the answer was a trojan.

I initially thought that I hadn’t done anything to warrant the concern but downloaded and installed a few spyware apps and Spywarefigher found an executable residing in my Program Files that looked like an MS patch that it reported as a trojan as well as a few tracking cookies.  I did the clean up and viola the crashes went away.  While it wasn’t a hard lesson learned, it was a lesson learned that running Virus protection is vital for the integrety of even gaming.

Thought I’d post that even if you think you’re privy to something like this, you may want to think again.  I’m still not sure what I did that allowed this to happen but I went ahead and installed AV even with the hit it takes on resources.