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[nonotyet]

Dudes, can anyone tell me why my laptop suddenly won't show flickr photos anymore? I can get to Flickr fine and I can see all the text surrounding pictures and everything, just not the pictures, and I find it strange.
Is my laptop Big Brothering me?

[YojimboMonkey]

What is the operating system, what is the browser?  If it's IE, try resetting your security for the Internet zone to defaults.  Possibly the flickr photos load from a different host than the page itself and that's triggering some kind of anti-advertising "feature."  When did this start happening?  Did you install any kind of browser plug-in or image viewing software shortly before this started happening?

Sorry to have so many questions, but more information is required.

[andronicus]

Yeah I was thinking if it's firefox you might have accidentally set the setting to block all images from flickr.com.  You can get to those settings with Tools-->Options-->Content, I think.

[nonotyet]

What is the operating system, what is the browser?  If it's IE, try resetting your security for the Internet zone to defaults.  Possibly the flickr photos load from a different host than the page itself and that's triggering some kind of anti-advertising "feature."  When did this start happening?  Did you install any kind of browser plug-in or image viewing software shortly before this started happening?

Sorry to have so many questions, but more information is required.

I use Firefox.
I have not installed anything to my knowledge and to the best of my recollection recently, except AIM Triton.
It started happening a couple weeks ago.
I do not know what an operating system is. *twirls hair*
I am a veritable FONT OF INFORMATION!
Fount?
Eh.

[Good Intentions]

Try titus' recommendation - that makes the most sense.

Your operating system is either Windows, Mac or (highly unlikely) Linux in one of its various distributions. There are others, but I think it's a safe assumption you're not using OS/2 or FreeBSD. Or VxWorks.

[SPACERACE]

she's on BeOS, don't you remember, she said it like a page ago god

[Trousers and Pat]

My cassette tape deck is only recording well on the right stereo channel. I can turn up the left and get the level right but it still sounds like garbage. Do I need to find a TAPE HEAD CLEANER? I don't think they even sell those anymore. I've been using these old tapes from my folks' house that have been stacked in piles outside for the past few months. Surely that has nothing to do with it.

[Andrew_TSKS]

of COURSE they sell tape head cleaners, i bought one at tower records three weeks ago.

that may or may not work, by the way. the older a tape deck, and the less often it's been cleaned even though there was nothing audibly dirty about it, the less effect a cleaning has the potential to have. my current tape deck is so madz dirty i'm just gonna have to get a new one eventually, and it's because i'm not conscientious about cleaning it every 10 hours of playing time no matter what. it's 10 years old, and it's just gotten too grotty to really be all that good. and yes, playing old tapes will make it worse, especially if they've been played rarely or never for long periods of time. but really, you should just be conscientious about cleaning your shit. learn a lesson from my laziness and the therefore shortened life of my own tape deck.

[Trousers and Pat]

Shit. I think I just hit for the cycle of poor tape hygiene! Maybe I should soak the cassette in soy sauce before playing it.
Time to turn my life around.

[elpollodiablo]

Firefox has been crashing whenever I open a site with any flash/shockwave elements (youtube, rottentomatoes[w/all those damn flash ads]). It's not a total crash; it comes up with a popup that says the Shockwave plugin has performed an illegal operation... Anyone know what's up with this?

[alexandra]

check your firefox plugins for updates, then check to see if your macromedia needs to be updated, and then check firefox. are you using firefox beta? because it's buggy.

[Maaik]

Okay, so I just got the internet back.  I've run a spyware check (Spybot Search & Destroy).  Still, I was getting these annoying popups--actually dialogue boxes labeled "Messenger Service" and they're all telling me my registry is fucked and to go to their website and get a thing to clean it.

So I looked at a couple and they're all like thirty bucks and I'm like fuck that.  But I eventually caved cos my computer's like eight hundred years old and probably needs the purging anyway.

So I download (and actually pay for) CleanMyPC and let it do its thing.  There was a lot of crap particularly in the COM/ActiveX area, whatever that means.

But here's the thing.  Registry's clean now and I'm still getting those fucking popups!  Are they gonna stop?

[SPACERACE]

YOU fucked up.

[Maaik]

Well, that's a given.  If you're too high to give a helpful proper response, that's alright, I guess.

[SPACERACE]

well, i hate to say it, but that was just another ad. no official windows message will point you towards a non-microsoft product, and to be honest i would probably see that ad on a mac if it weren't for pop-up blockers. the registry cleaning probably didn't hurt, but that's a free service that comes with windows, that'll find and delete unused registry entries, if i remember correctly. if not, there are numerous free programs that do it.

if it's not just a pop-up ad, and it was an actual windows messenger window, then it's just a trojan or something like that, to be honest i'm not quite nerdy enough to be able to tell you how to fix that from scratch.

[jebreject]

nothing showed up in s&d, maaaaaik?

[Maaik]

s&d apparently cleared some stuff, but the popup thing (I just had to close three of the fuckers as I was typing this.  It's like it knows I'm talking about it) persists.

[SPACERACE]

virus scan, then try adaware, for starters.

[jebreject]

these types of things can be a pain to get rid of.  look up the exact message on google and you might be able to find some pertinant info.  did you run a virus scan as well?  also, did you do the scan in safe mode, after turning on "show hidden files"?  this is probably the most important thing, or the clean-up might not hold.

[jebreject]

virus scan, then try adaware, for starters.

eh, i've never really had any more luck with adaware than i have with s&d

[Maaik]

how do i get to this "safe mode"?  I'm running xp.

[jebreject]

be sure to turn on "show hidden files" first

and then, re-start your computer.  while everything is loading up, but BEFORE windows starts loading, jam on the F8 button.

[Maaik]

be sure to turn on "show hidden files" first

i'm really a big dummy.  how do i do this?

and then, re-start your computer.  while everything is loading up, but BEFORE windows starts loading, jam on the F8 button.

okay, that i can do.

[jebreject]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/hiddenfiles.mspx

[YojimboMonkey]

Go here and download the smitfraudfix file.  Unzip the files it contains to a location you can find later.

Go here and download the free version of ewido antispyware.

Boot into Safe Mode by following the instructions posted earlier, that is, to hit the F8 button just before your Windows splash screen comes up during boot, then choose Safe Mode from the menu that appears.  Run the smitfraudfix process, following the instructions that come with it.

After it finishes, boot back into regular mode.  Install the ewido product, update it, and run a full scan.  Get yourself a cup of coffee and a newspaper, 'cause this will take a little while.  Remove everything it finds.

Now open the Services tool under Administrative Tools in your Control Panel.  Make sure the service called "Messenger" is disabled.  DO NOT disable any other services unless someone who knows what the hell they're talking about advises you to, and even then, it's not my fault if you mess something up.

Now run Windows Updates and get your machine completely up-to-date on all the latest security patches.  If you spend a lot of time online, think about getting a third-party firewall product like ZoneAlarm.  Make sure you have a good antivirus program and keep it fully updated.

holler back if you need more help, I'll check back after work.