O.T. - How can I delete Firefox add-on

I read all the posts but I was not ready
to uninstall and reinstall Firefox just yet.

If I removed the plugins then nothing
would work, e.g. Silverlight correct?

I just created a bookmark file following
your instructions and put it in My Documents.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I honestly don't remember entering
any information to the security page
although I may have.

I followed your link and this is what
it gave me:

http://i58.tinypic.com/xmvofo.jpg

then

http://i57.tinypic.com/53o47d.jpg

then

http://i58.tinypic.com/hs9l47.jpg

Robert

The code you receive, should only be delivered
to Microsoft, at the "https" "live.com" type
of address.

In a phishing attack, someone sends you an
email, and asks for the information. You should
only part with the information, when communicating
directly with the email site, to avoid giving
the security code to the bad guys. They can be
very slick, tell you "you're about to lose your
account unless you send us the info" and put
pressure on you. Keep the code safe. Only
reveal it when needed by Microsoft, and directly
to the appropriate site. Also, Microsoft
should not be phoning you and making similar
phishing attempts. In a phone attack, you have
no way to determine the person on the other
end of the line, is scamming you from India.
And doesn't actually work for Microsoft.

Paul

Uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox probably doesn't
remove the profile at all. If I was "cleaning house", after
uninstalling Firefox, I would remove everything in
C:\Users\Paul\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox including
the profiles.ini file, and then Firefox would not be able
to get any of the old stuff. It is for that reason, I would
save the "bookmarkbackups" folder with the jsonls4 files in it.


I've stored bookmarks in My Documents and on
my external HD using Buffalo's instructions
but they look nothing like yours. It just says
bookmarks.html.

I then re-read your instructions to include
==.jsonlz4 but don't understand how I can apply
it?

http://i58.tinypic.com/2qa2u5z.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/1265ms7.jpg

I saved the bookmark backup from Agent Ransack
to the desk top with no alteration.

http://i60.tinypic.com/2prg3v5.jpg

Here's the download page I found for FF when I'm
ready to re-install.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox probably doesn't
remove the profile at all. If I was "cleaning house", after
uninstalling Firefox, I would remove everything in
C:\Users\Paul\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox including
the profiles.ini file, and then Firefox would not be able
to get any of the old stuff. It is for that reason, I would
save the "bookmarkbackups" folder with the jsonls4 files in it.


I've stored bookmarks in My Documents and on
my external HD using Buffalo's instructions
but they look nothing like yours. It just says
bookmarks.html.

I then re-read your instructions to include
==.jsonlz4 but don't understand how I can apply
it?

http://i58.tinypic.com/2qa2u5z.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/1265ms7.jpg

I saved the bookmark backup from Agent Ransack
to the desk top with no alteration.

http://i60.tinypic.com/2prg3v5.jpg

Here's the download page I found for FF when I'm
ready to re-install.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

Robert

The difference is, "Exporting" the bookmarks, gives
you an HTML (text) file with the links in it. It
mainly ensures you have a copy of the information.
So you cannot lose everything.

*******

The .jsonlz4 files contain the bookmarks, but in
a format native to Firefox. So the files are ready
to use by Firefox and make the bookmark menu. That
to me is the difference.

I have to move some disks around, but I can test
that Firefox, when re-installed, picks up the
jsonlz4 files properly. I have to shut this computer
down, to move some disks over.

Back in a moment...

Paul

Paul wrote:
Mark Twain wrote:
Uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox probably doesn't
remove the profile at all. If I was "cleaning house", after
uninstalling Firefox, I would remove everything in
C:\Users\Paul\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox including
the profiles.ini file, and then Firefox would not be able
to get any of the old stuff. It is for that reason, I would
save the "bookmarkbackups" folder with the jsonls4 files in it.

I've stored bookmarks in My Documents and on my external HD using
Buffalo's instructions
but they look nothing like yours. It just says
bookmarks.html.
I then re-read your instructions to include ==.jsonlz4 but don't
understand how I can apply
it?
http://i58.tinypic.com/2qa2u5z.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/1265ms7.jpg

I saved the bookmark backup from Agent Ransack to the desk top with no
alteration.
http://i60.tinypic.com/2prg3v5.jpg

Here's the download page I found for FF when I'm
ready to re-install.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

Robert

The difference is, "Exporting" the bookmarks, gives
you an HTML (text) file with the links in it. It
mainly ensures you have a copy of the information.
So you cannot lose everything.

*******

The .jsonlz4 files contain the bookmarks, but in
a format native to Firefox. So the files are ready
to use by Firefox and make the bookmark menu. That
to me is the difference.

I have to move some disks around, but I can test
that Firefox, when re-installed, picks up the
jsonlz4 files properly. I have to shut this computer
down, to move some disks over.

Back in a moment...

Paul

OK, I did a test, and it looks like Buffalo wins.

The Export is the way to go.

In the menu where it says "Unsorted Bookmarks", there
is both an Export and Import capability. You can re-import
the HTML file you just created if you want.

*******

To have Firefox keep things the way they are, you'd
virtually have to keep the Profile folder intact.
And since your purpose in cleaning house, is to dump
the bloated parts of the Profile. That's not really
much of an option.

Above the folder where you find the prefs.js, is a
file "profiles.ini". That's a text file that opens
in Notepad. You can keep a pointer in there, to
more than one profile. Or you can edit the
contents, to point at an old Profile folder.
Like have it point at your "esbha4fm.default"
folder. So you can make Firefox use an old profile.
In your case though, part of the cleanup process
is removing the Profile "esbha4fm.default" and not
using it again. We need to keep the exported HTML
bookmarks from it, at the very least.

What you can do now, is back up the entire
"esbha4fm.default" folder for safe-keeping.
That's probably the best thing to do. If things
don't work out, you can put it back, edit
profiles.ini, and change the folder pointer
to point to "esbha4fm.default". And do that
while Firefox is not running. That's your
"escape plan".

And use Buffalo's recipe, to export the bookmarks.
When you re-import them (using the Unsorted Bookmarks
thing : Import), sometimes things like separator bars get lost.
But I hope that at least all the bookmarks will still be
in there.

If I could figure out the linkage between Firefox and
the jsonlz4, it might be possible to keep the
bookmarks intact in their native format. But when
I reinstalled Firefox, it didn't access those files
when I plopped them into the right place. They
got ignored.

So my Firefox on the test machine, is now *very very clean* :-)
There's not even any history, when I type stuff
in the URL bar. OK, I sent over an HTML bookmarks
file from the other computer, and boy, was Firefox
slow "Importing" that. But it succeeded and didn't
crash. The file was around 3MB or so. So the importing
feature does work.

Paul

So if I understand you correctly, jump dump
all bookmarks and start over with a clean slate?


Robert

On Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 2:12:42 AM UTC-7, Mark Twain wrote:
So if I understand you correctly, jump dump
all bookmarks and start over with a clean slate?


Robert

This is unfortunate because I will loose years of work and research



R

Mark Twain wrote:
On Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 2:12:42 AM UTC-7, Mark Twain wrote:
So if I understand you correctly, jump dump
all bookmarks and start over with a clean slate?


Robert

This is unfortunate because I will loose years of work and research



R

Uninstalling Firefox
--------------------

This is only necessary as a procedure of last resort.
If every other thing you've tried hasn't worked. Skip
to the next section for something easier...

Go to the Bookmarks : Unsorted Bookmarks thing and do the Export.
That gives bookmarks.html. Save the file some place safe.

Uninstall Firefox from the Programs and Features (or Add/Remove) place.
Programs and Features is Windows 7.

With Agent Ransack, locate prefs.js again. That gives you a path
to find the Profile area.

Remove the profile, so that Firefox cannot find it on a reinstallation.

Now, install Firefox. Start Firefox once and close it.

With Agent Ransack, you should be able to locate the new prefs.js.
And that will give you a path, to where the new (clean) profile
is located. There's nothing to do here, just pointing out that
the profile folder will be assigned a new random xxxxxxxx.default
name.

With Firefox running, click near the top and turn on the
Menu Bar again. Find the Preferences, and change the home preference
to "about:blank" or "aboutlugins", whatever you want to look at,
at startup.

Now, having done a minimal amount of configuring, go to Bookmarks : Unsorted
and access the "Import" function there. Import the "bookmarks.html"
file you made at the top. Now your bookmarks are back.

My comment was that sometimes the formatting of the bookmarks, like
the location of separator bars (thin black line between bookmark sections)
can get messed up a little. But all the bookmarks should still be there.
It all depends on how good of a job the Import function is doing
these days. If you took a bookmarks.html file from ten years ago,
and tried to import it, the format is likely to be more messed up,
than if you take bookmarks from Firefox 36 and import them to
Firefox 37.

Now what all of that above does, is gives you a chance to clean out
even the spots that other procedures will miss. You would do that,
if all other efforts to remove pests, were failing.

And all it would take, is malware (EXE or DLL) sitting somewhere
else on the computer, not in a Firefox folder, to put back any
evil it wants.

*******

If you want to try something less onerous, try "resetting" Firefox,
which does much the same thing.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...ng+preferences

Now, is that page confusing or what ? I don't like
the writing style.

If I were you, I'd try Solution 1, which is to let Firefox
do the cleanup. I made a picture.

1) Using the Menu bar, select "Help : Troubleshooting Information"
A new tab will open.
2) In the upper right corner, is a "Refresh Firefox" button.
Click that. A smaller dialog box opens. It tells you what
is about to happen, and you click the button there to
confirm you want to do it.

This step removes AddOns, such as OldBar or AdBlock.

This step does not remove Plugins such as Silverlight
or QuickTime.

http://i61.tinypic.com/x1am3p.gif

3) Firefox will disappear, and come back, all clean and shiny...

4) You'll have to right-click up near the top, and use
the context menu to turn on the Menu Bar again, which
has File and Edit printed on it.

5) You'll need to find the Preferences and set the home
page to "about:blank" or "aboutlugins", as you wish.
To stop the Firefox mild advertising at startup.

Check that your bookmarks are present. If not, you have
the "bookmarks.html" file that you made earlier, just in
case. My bookmarks are still there (the huge list I imported
yesterday was preserved).

You are also likely to need to adjust the "Always Activate"
thing for Silverlight. So don't forget that step. If you had
installed the Click-To-Play Manager AddOn, you'd have to
re-install that, because AddOns get removed when you refresh
Firefox with that button. The Click-To-Play Manager AddOn
allows you to Always Activate Silverlight plugin just for the
outlook.com domain, if that's what you want. But leaving
Silverlight always turned on (a slightly less secure option),
is certainly much less work to do.

HTH,
Paul

Hello Paul,

I elected to reset FF and the about
blank page works and bookmarks are present:

http://i58.tinypic.com/29ekw8m.jpg

I then checked Agent Ransack for prefs.js

http://i61.tinypic.com/2qbdonn.jpg

then plugins:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2eeexcw.jpg

I'll leave Silverlight as is since you mentioned
its a security issue.

Since Quicktime is attached to so many programs
should I activate it or leave it as is? I never use
it and must have installed with FF or some other
program.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

I elected to reset FF and the about
blank page works and bookmarks are present:

http://i58.tinypic.com/29ekw8m.jpg

I then checked Agent Ransack for prefs.js

http://i61.tinypic.com/2qbdonn.jpg

then plugins:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2eeexcw.jpg

I'll leave Silverlight as is since you mentioned
its a security issue.

Since Quicktime is attached to so many programs
should I activate it or leave it as is? I never use
it and must have installed with FF or some other
program.

Robert

Bump it up to QuickTime 7. Just in case.
My reason for suggesting this, is the same
reason as installing Adobe Flash upgrades.
Just in case there were security fixes.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Download QuickTime 7
QuickTime 7.7.6 for Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

So it apparently doesn't work for Win8.

That's the problem with virtually all plugin
technologies. The bad guys work 24/7 trying
to break them. And as a consequence, when
holes are found, the companies making the
plugins have to patch them. It's "the
circle of life, for computers".

*******

I gotta say, you're getting good at this stuff :-)

Paul

Hello Paul,

I again had a message in the system tray to turn
on Avast but this time it let me click it to turn it
on.

I created another bookmark backup as you suggested
then downloaded Quicktime:

http://i59.tinypic.com/vy4igl.jpg

although Unchecky popped up with a warning.

http://i57.tinypic.com/5ocmft.jpg

but went ahead with your recommendation

http://i60.tinypic.com/poo3.jpg

Since cleaning Firefox, I've noticed a marked
improvement in performance and speed although
there are times when a page seems to take an
inordinately long time in loading. I assume this is
because the site is busy? Otherwise the computer is
blindly fast now!@!

Thanks for the nice compliment but if I seem to
be getting better its only because of your excellent
instructions and Buffalo's and others who have helped
with their advice.

I wish Silverlight wasn't an issue where I could turn
it on but I would rather be safe than sorry.

I'm now doing a backup to my external HD.

Any other thought/suggestions ?


p.s. I do have another question but it involves the 8200, nothing
major but I can put that in another post since this is long
enough already.


Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

I again had a message in the system tray to turn
on Avast but this time it let me click it to turn it
on.

I created another bookmark backup as you suggested
then downloaded Quicktime:

http://i59.tinypic.com/vy4igl.jpg

although Unchecky popped up with a warning.

http://i57.tinypic.com/5ocmft.jpg

but went ahead with your recommendation

http://i60.tinypic.com/poo3.jpg

Since cleaning Firefox, I've noticed a marked
improvement in performance and speed although
there are times when a page seems to take an
inordinately long time in loading. I assume this is
because the site is busy? Otherwise the computer is
blindly fast now!@!

Thanks for the nice compliment but if I seem to
be getting better its only because of your excellent
instructions and Buffalo's and others who have helped
with their advice.

I wish Silverlight wasn't an issue where I could turn
it on but I would rather be safe than sorry.

I'm now doing a backup to my external HD.

Any other thought/suggestions ?


p.s. I do have another question but it involves the 8200, nothing
major but I can put that in another post since this is long
enough already.


Robert

You know, I didn't think to check all the goodies in the
40MB Quicktime package. It looks like the Apple software
will be checking for updates once a week.

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_...a-batch-script

I think you should look in the main Avast control panel,
to make sure everything that should be ON, is turned on.

Paul

Hello Paul,

The 'Turn on Avast Antivirus' message keeps coming back ??

http://i59.tinypic.com/10xswb6.jpg

then Avast pops up:

http://i60.tinypic.com/25tdmjk.jpg

Here's all the settings/performance for Avast but I see nothing
related to Apple. So does that mean I have to download it again
with the link you provided?


http://i59.tinypic.com/286siyt.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/2rhwznk.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/2r39g29.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/hriko0.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/250lbug.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/33yhp3q.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/20ha529.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/28bcy1c.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/24lv6ad.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/2941agi.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/znn0y8.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/24ky4v9.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/2a5bt69.jpg



Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

The 'Turn on Avast Antivirus' message keeps coming back ??

http://i59.tinypic.com/10xswb6.jpg

then Avast pops up:

http://i60.tinypic.com/25tdmjk.jpg

Here's all the settings/performance for Avast but I see nothing
related to Apple. So does that mean I have to download it again
with the link you provided?


http://i59.tinypic.com/286siyt.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/2rhwznk.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/2r39g29.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/hriko0.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/250lbug.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/33yhp3q.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/20ha529.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/28bcy1c.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/24lv6ad.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/2941agi.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/znn0y8.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/24ky4v9.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/2a5bt69.jpg



Thanks,
Robert



The only thing I can suggest, is what I saw in a
forum post. Which is to disable the items here.
All of them. Click OK. Then reenter the GUI
later and turn them all back on again. The
idea being, to see if you can get Avast
to realize they're all enabled, by "toggling"
them once.

http://i59.tinypic.com/24lv6ad.jpg

File System Shield
Mail Shield
Web Shield
Secure DNS

HTH,
Paul

"Mark Twain" wrote in message
...

Hello Paul,

The 'Turn on Avast Antivirus' message keeps coming back ??

http://i59.tinypic.com/10xswb6.jpg

then Avast pops up:

http://i60.tinypic.com/25tdmjk.jpg

Here's all the settings/performance for Avast but I see nothing
related to Apple. So does that mean I have to download it again
with the link you provided?


http://i59.tinypic.com/286siyt.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/2rhwznk.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/2r39g29.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/hriko0.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/250lbug.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/33yhp3q.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/20ha529.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/28bcy1c.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/24lv6ad.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/2941agi.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/znn0y8.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/24ky4v9.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/2a5bt69.jpg



Thanks,
Robert

To me it looks like Windows isn't recognizing Avast at startup.
Open up the action center and see if you can do anything there. Overall, not
a major problem
Do you have the pd version of Avast?
Avast is running according to the the next notice.
--
Buffalo