Sorry.....I read the don't respond to this I am just testing and didn't go much further...

So any computer you use will crash when you are using it and go to this forum?

I can honestly say that I have never heard that before.

I don't believe it is the site that is directly causing you issue or there would be more folks having issues.

Did you load your home and work PC's? I have seen instances where free software online work against each other. Malware detectors think that a virus scanner is a worm and act to stop it casuing the virus scanner to lock down "afected" files which can be DLL's as well as other basic OS components. This can cause an MS OS to "abend" and reboot. You probably get a "Your computer has recovered from a major error" type message when you get back in.

Perhaps you can go here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/ and create a new virtual PC with just a clean instal then try the site. If it works load one new piece of software you use and so on.

Matthew

 

I suspect the main difference between this forum and most others is the embedded UStream.

Steps to isolate would be to create a bookmark to another page other than the index page in which no UStream video is present, for instance the new posts link is what I use to enter the site because the embedded UStream always makes me have to wait 10 to 15 seconds before the page unfreezes. During that time I cannot do anything with the browser, so I avoid the page altogether.

If your computer is crashing, I would tend to think it might be a defective codec used to display the video, that is assuming it is UStream inducing the problem.

I also use a proxy server in which I can blacklist any given webpage. It might be useful to diagnose your problem. You can download a 30 day trial at http://xk72.com. The proxy is called Charles and it is very easy to use. All webpage accesses are recorded so you can see what was sent to and from them. You can right click on any page or a whole website and selectively block access. This is yet another way to block UStream to see if it is the culprit.

 

I sent him an email too since he may not be able to get on the site.

 

Flash, are you blocking the ustream ads? I don't have any freezing problems in either IE6 or firefox. Maybe a second or two for the page to load up. I just updated my host file today, which is the easy way to block evil stuff. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm Couldn't hurt for ewo to do this too. I checked on another pc with a fresh install of winxp and the ustream ads are targeted to my location; Wash, DC . So we each get different ads. If you click them, you do get a popup to another page. So that's maybe where the popup are coming from (ewo doesn't say that here, but during the chat he said he was getting popups and booted from the phlatforum).

-Kwok

 

ewo also said the popups he was getting were asking him to do a survey for/about the Phlatforum. That's a worm or malware.
Has he ever scanned his flashdrive? He did say he was using it between all 3 computers.
He also needs to download a FRESH copy of the FlashPlayer and install it over whatever is there now - doing that got rid of a lot of video problems on my computer, last month.

 

ewo, maybe you should dump ie, that isn't really a question btw! Go with Firefox, Opera, or Netscape even! I would 99% say it's all ie's fault, worm included.

Some of those worms are NASTY as Flash and Dorsal point out. I've seen one that was trying to pull up websites even after the PC was pulled from the network!

Best bet to try and attempt a rescue is using "spybot"
Then try out using AVAST, it's free virus scanning software, I don't trust the ones you pay for lol!
Then download and install firefox and use that as you browser.

I hope that helps out!

 

www.malwarebytes.org best free scanner I have ever seen

 

Oh yeah, make sure you turn off system restore before you scan, it has caused me problems before, once you clean it you can turn it back on

 

Yes I can and do block UStream ads with the Charles proxy... it accomplishes the same thing as a hosts file except I can turn it on or off at will and it can be browser specific.

Regardless of blocking, IE, or Firefox, the index page always freezes temporarily when first brought up. Usually when I scroll down to where the embedded player is present.

For that reason, I rarely go to the index page any more. I would prefer that the embedded UStream stuff be linked to another page so it does not interfere with load time for the index page but its not my forum.

 

I think ewo is saying, that the ustream and pm problems happen with firefox. As far as the flashplayer, I think it's just a matter of downloading and installing it manually to get it to work with firefox. I've had this problem in the past.

On top of, antivirus and firewall, I use this program called "HijackThis": http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/ It basically shows all the stuff that starts up on your computer; programs, services, ie plugins. It only takes a few seconds to run, unlike doing an actual scan of your harddrive. And I've gotten into the habit of running it every few days, even thought I haven't gotten a virus in a long time. But it familiarizes you with what's running, so when something strange shows up, it's easy to spot. Here's two screens shots of what it shows for my computer:



Attached files

 

This is the theory, you can skip this and go directly to the install directions below.
Ewo wanted to know how to use the HOST file, so here is a quick explanation. When we want to find a web site or computer on the internet, we need to know their ip address. For example, 127.0.0.1 But that doesn't make any sense to people, as it's just a bunch of numbers. So we use web address like http://www.google.com. When we type this into the browser, the browser goes to a DNS server and looks up the ip address. But before going to the DNS server, the browser looks 1st at the "HOST" file to see if it's listed there. If so, it uses the ip address listed there. So one use of a "HOST" file is if the DNS server is down. But another is to block websites the you don't want your computer to have access to, for example ads or virus laden sites. You can open the host file with any text editor, to see what it is. But it's just a list of web sites and what it's corresponding ip address is. If you want to block the site then the ip address is listed as "127.0.0.1", which is your local computer. It's not there, so that website is simply not found. For example, something like this:
127.0.0.1 fr.a2dfp.net
127.0.0.1 m.fr.a2dfp.net
127.0.0.1 ad.a8.net


How to install HOST file
To install the HOST file, you simply need to copy it to the right folder. I winxp it's:
C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32DRIVERSETC

It's even easier because, they provide a dos batch file that does it for you. Just go to the web page: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm About half way down, download the file "hosts.zip" Or if you can't find it, the direct link is: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.zip Unzip it and just double click the "mvps.bat" file and that will install it. You will probably have to restart your browser for it to take effect. Basically, this will stop the ustream ads and stop your computer from contacting a huge list of bad websites.

-Kwok