Chrome going all to pieces

[Onkel Neal]

Been using Chrome for a couple years, but lately it's turning to crap. Shockwave flash keeps failing. I tried looking at the plugins and disabling one of the two Flashplayers or whatever, but still causing trouble. Tried updating Chrome, keeps telling me "Almost there, Relaunch". And it never completes the upgrade. Now I've done something to it and it won't play video.

[HW3]

Chrome disabled Flash in the latest update due to a big vulnerability in it. Right click the box where the message comes up and select play this and it will play. Also look up in the address bar by the star, there should be a icon there with a red X, click it and I think you can select the site to allow Flash to play anything on that site.

[Onkel Neal]

Thanks, HW

[CTU_Clay]

Firefox is my choice over Chrome and IE.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Have been using Firefox for quite awhile. Have Chrome, just don't use it much.

[Onkel Neal]

Have had it with Chrome. The last six months my laptop will come to a stop, and the only remedy is to use the Task Manager to kill the 6 or so Chrome processes. Switching back to IE10 until I get my new laptop with the new version of IE, I think they call it Edge. Should be excellent at playing U2 songs.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, Edge is a cell phone app, not a computer app. It's also a simple port, a new front end on the same old IE of old. They've removed all the controls to customize your experience, but that's unfortunately been a trend with Firefox and Chrome too.

Looks like Firefox is having a conniption fit and are about to invalidate all Firefox extensions (the reason I use Firefox!) in favor of adopting Chrome extensions. Chrome is going through the thing you're having problems with. Edge thinks our computer is a cell phone. We're just in a down time for browsers and there's no reasonable fix for it right now. Right now the hot style that everyone is working toward is the "transparent browser" that emulates a cell phone app where you aren't even aware the browser is there--you just play on the internet with whatever restrictions they chose to impose on you.

The original developer of Opera is coming out with a new browser, Vivaldi, which looks promising but isn't ready for prime time. Linux has some very intriguing browsers, Konqueror is most interesting, a combination "open anything," file manager, internet browser that's like a swiss army knife for your computer.

Then we have the Java and Flash security issues, which affect all operating systems and browsers. If your shields are up with great antivirus, antimalware and two-way firewall and you sit behind a hardware firewall in your router, you are relatively safe and are just PO'd by the browsers trying to force those items into obsolescence by no longer supporting them. This is while alternatives are not fully developed.

The ultimate danger is the depreciation of the go anywhere do anything browser for the severely restricted app. Apps are the potential end of the Internetasd we know it, as they carve it up into virtual lots for sale. You can't go to Subsim in the Amazon app. There is lots of danger there and apps are not our friends.

If I were you, Neal, I'd just apply band aids right now to make it work for now. Edge isn't going to solve your problem either. It's time to find temporary shelter and wait for the next generation, then hope they give us enough controls to be able to type a response on a forum.

This morning I'm working on a malware infested Windows 10 machine. I'll play with Edge a little and let you know what I think. Should be fun.

[STEED]

Sounds like the very problem I had with Firefox while watching videos CTD 6 out of 10 times and as the months went on 10 out of 10 times!

Every other thing was alright but watching videos just became a waste of time, now use Opera as my main browser and IE11 as back up. Also have Chrome But I hardly use it but never had video issues with it.

[Rockin Robbins]

Wow! Edge is certainly wide open to phishing and trojans:

This site says...

Unable to access Networl!!!

A Suspicious Connection Was Trying to Access Your Logins, Banking Details & Tracking your Internet Activity.

Windows Security Center & Firewall Services are Disabled, Error code 0x8007042c,

Your TCP Connection Was Blocked by Your Firewall. Your Accounts May be Suspended Until You Take Action.

Your Personal Information May Have Leaked. IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED

Your Hard Disk May Have Trojan Virus! Please Do Not Try to Fix Manually, It May Crash Your Data.

Please Visit your Nearest Windows Service Center OR Call Help Desk (edit: here it comes!)

------------------------------------------------------------
Customer Service 1-855-980-6835 (TOLL FREE)
------------------------------------------------------------

There's an OK button at the bottom. Where's my "not OK" button? Looks plenty genuine to me and I have hundreds of excess dollars in my pocket to waste. What could go wrong if I called the number?


Killing the badly faked error message, telling Edge not to allow any more pop-ups from this site I see our webpage is err3.99398.info. This person thought he had a legitimate Microsoft error message and he was just looking at a rogue webpage, courtesy of the new safer Edge browser. This happens on Firefox and Chrome too, but less often. The bad guys are very resourceful nowdays.

At least this computer appears not to be really infested, subject to scanning to verify. I'll keep you posted on Edge.

[Rockin Robbins]

Edge seems pretty inoffensive. It's a typical but somewhat pared down cell phone browser. It has no menu bar. It DOES surprisingly have the option to show the favorites bar. I liked that. The locations bar has back and forth arrows for next and previous site, reload site button, home button, location input box with a standard star to favorite/bookmark the address, something called the hub where you get favorites, reading list (works like Pocket), history and downloads, something about taking a web note, a cell phone type share button (with incomprensible non-standard icon. FEATURE!!) and the familiar ... for other options.

It's pretty innocuous, pretty substandard as far as features go and is styled to blur the line between the "Metro" apps and the Windows apps. Each attempts to mimic the other in Windows 10, it's truly bizarre.

But it works just like your cell phone browser and no surprises there. If the goal is to demote computers to mere cell phones chock this one up as a success. There's nothing to recommend it but not many negatives.

And don't fall for their claptrap about how much safer it is. It was infested just fine on this computer and did nothing to sound the alarm or prevent the infestation, website hijack or phishing scam. Edge was fat, dumb and happy.

[Rockin Robbins]

Neal, I should have thought of this earlier. My present browser parking spot for Windows is Waterfox, a higher performing compilation of Firefox for 64-bit systems. I've never had a video problem with Waterfox even when normal Firefox is having a pity party over one. It's perceptively faster then Firefox and uses all the same extensions.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Neal, I should have thought of this earlier. My present browser parking spot for Windows is Waterfox, a higher performing compilation of Firefox for 64-bit systems. I've never had a video problem with Waterfox even when normal Firefox is having a pity party over one. It's perceptively faster then Firefox and uses all the same extensions.

Oh wow! Just got Waterfox and I am very pleased! Dunno, how it acts with other browsers, but I had Firefox before and Waterfox took everything (bookmarks, cookies etc.) from Firefox, so I just had to install Waterfox and start using it like I had used FF.

Thanks, RR!

[AVGWarhawk]

I agree with Neal. Chrome is becoming an issue. Flash constantly crashes. I tried the Waterfox RR recommended. Works well.

[Onkel Neal]

Well, after a week of IE, I am pretty sure it's my ancient laptop, not any browser. But, new laptop will be here in 2 days, so the old one needs to hold out long enough to transfer files and programs....

[Onkel Neal]

Well, new laptop, Chrome works fine. I guess I was grasping at straws before, the old laptop must have been the problem, probably needed a reformat.