O.T. Computer Cleaning Maintenance:

Mark Twain wrote:
Here's the VOTPrx search:

http://i62.tinypic.com/29e6srn.jpg

It only found two files.

Robert

So that folder is where Arcade Twist stores its preferences.

It's possible the Program Files portion has already
been quarantined.

You would be more worried about VOTPrx.exe (executable
program that provides the Arcade Twist "Service" entry),
versus VOTPrx.ini which just contains the configuration
settings to run it.

There might have been a file ending in .xpi
associated with the thing. The .xpi would be
a plugin loaded by Firefox (but not necessarily
stored in Firefox folder). The .xpi files can
be loaded by Firefox, while sitting in their
own little folder.

*******

So how it works, would be something like this.

1) Computer boots.
2) VOTPrx.exe is run as a Service. It might have been
in a Startup folder for example.
3) Once VOTPrx.exe is running, it makes sure that
Firefox sees and loads the Arcade-Twist-related
.xpi file. Now Firefox mis-behaves according to
what the .xpi file tells it to do.
4) Resetting Firefox, might give temporary relief,
except after the next reboot, (3) could make
sure Firefox gets the .xpi again.
5) Removal, as usual, requires getting rid of every
repair method these nuisance softwares use.

Do a reboot, check whether Adwcleaner can still see
any evidence of it.

Paul

I ran AdwareCleaner again and it 's clean
except I noticed what may be just a heading
of sorts.

http://i57.tinypic.com/2ir412d.jpg

However, I had (5) script pop-ups and the
8200 is still slow as molasses in Jan.

Robert

I should add that (5) script pop-ups
has been the norm.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I should add that (5) script pop-ups
has been the norm.

Robert

I'm running out of things to try.

You have the Firefox internal profiling capability.
Which will likely tell you a certain Yahoo News .js
file is where it is bogged down.

If you normally visit www.yahoo.com you could visit

http://m.yahoo.com

which would be the "mobile" equivalent and see if
the computing load is reduced at all.

Paul

This is what I did:

I logged to www.yahoo.com and opened a story
about El Nina with moving graphics it worked fine
with no pop-ups. I then went to eBay and it
was fine then logged into Hotmail and it was
fine, and also on MSN where I opened another
news item with no issues whatsoever and the
response is as it should be. Not a single script
pop-up!

So it seems that the problem is with Google
for some reason?

Robert

I forgot to add that while on eBay I
did some searches and opened up items
with not a single problem or pop-up.


Robert

In passing, I've noticed this of late
with news stories that have a video:

http://i58.tinypic.com/5e8y21.jpg

I click on the video and then this oval
appears but the video never plays. The oval
just oscillates.

Is this cause for concern?

Robert

I should have mentioned this was on
the 8500.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
This is what I did:

I logged to www.yahoo.com and opened a story
about El Nina with moving graphics it worked fine
with no pop-ups. I then went to eBay and it
was fine then logged into Hotmail and it was
fine, and also on MSN where I opened another
news item with no issues whatsoever and the
response is as it should be. Not a single script
pop-up!

So it seems that the problem is with Google
for some reason?

Robert


That's possible.

On my machine, the "Loading" rectangle shows in the
lower left hand corner. But my CPU is not tied up.

If you look on the left, there are "Privacy" and
"Terms of Service" links, which are ordinary links
and not Javascript crap. If you click "Privacy" to
read the Privacy policy, then use the Back button,
it seems to "unstick" whatever you were attempting
to do over there. So there is something wrong
with the code on the groups.google.com page.

And the only way to get around that, is for
Google to fix the code. And you know that's not
going to happen.

Paul

I tried your suggestion but it still has
the script pop-ups after I backspaced out
of the Privacy, Terms of Service.

The 8500 isn't affected so is it because
the 8200 is older and can't handle it for
one reason or another?

As I said it worked fine on the other sites
with no issues and response was normal.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
In passing, I've noticed this of late
with news stories that have a video:

http://i58.tinypic.com/5e8y21.jpg

I click on the video and then this oval
appears but the video never plays. The oval
just oscillates.

Is this cause for concern?

Robert

That is yet another inline video player. I
tried looking at the source code, but it's
so many layers deep, I can't tell if it is
HTML5 VP8 or if it uses Adobe Flash. My machine
here didn't have a problem with getting an
image to appear after the spinning loader was
presented.

And since that picture is from your 8500, I
would have expected everything to work. There's
no point on the 8500, to be messing about
with hardware acceleration settings. It's
not like some old decrepit hardware where
you have to adjust everything to get some
output. It should have worked.

Paul

Mark Twain wrote:
I tried your suggestion but it still has
the script pop-ups after I backspaced out
of the Privacy, Terms of Service.

The 8500 isn't affected so is it because
the 8200 is older and can't handle it for
one reason or another?

As I said it worked fine on the other sites
with no issues and response was normal.

Robert

They can send different code, as a function of
detected OS.

I'm running WinXP here, and viewing Google Groups,
the controls don't work all that well, but at least
the CPU usage is minimal.

What Google does, is it has at least one Javascript
file which runs in parallel with the others, and
collects information for later advertising. It
could be that the code has different timing on
your machine and deadlocks (two code modules,
waiting for each other to answer their request).

One of the files was a bit more than 2MB of Javascript,
which would be a lot of code to analyze.

Paul

On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 17:40:58 -0700 (PDT), Mark Twain
wrote:

Hello Ken,

I'm not exactly sure what you mean?

Are you saying using part of a filename
to search is the fastest? If so, that
is what I'm doing since I don't have a
filename to search for.



No, I'm saying that if you want to search by file name, rather than by
file content, the program Search Everything is much faster than Agent
Ransack.

Get it at http://www.voidtools.com/

Oh, I misunderstood you, I didn't realize you
were pointing me to a search engine. Sorry about
that.

Robert

I think were done unless you wish me to
run any tests or scans.

Again I wish to thank you for your time
and patience in walking me through all of
this. Great links and you explain everything
which is very helpful in teaching me and others
about computers.

I also want to thank Ken for his contributions
which all help and for those who may follow this
thread.

Robert