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I conducted an investigation, interrogated the hotkeys, put Snipping Tool under surveillance... Everything points to one thing: Win+Shift+T is a myth, created to distract insiders from the real bugs.

It should extract text unless you're focusing taskbar

Win+Shift+T still doesn’t work for insiders. Instead of quickly extracting text in Snipping Tool, it just highlights the shortcut on the taskbar.

Thanks for the info, no need to test

Thank you for reply. I use the latest Serpent 52.9 (my main browser) and today it works fine. I guess it had nothing to do with Serpent now because I often run experiments with FSFilters on my machine to find the most optimum configuration and it must have been the filter cascade that triggered that. I honestly didn't expect it to be caused by drivers/filters.

Hello kuja killer, I did not mean to offend you by describing your PayPal-fight as stubborn. There simply was little sense in repeatedly - like Sisyphus - rolling a huge stone (e-mail option) up a hill only to have it roll back down again ("slide the mouse"). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You asked: What is "tabula rasa" ? Tabula rasa is Latin for “blank slate" This means: 1. A mind not yet affected by experiences, impressions, etc. the mind in its uninformed original state (in the philosophy of Locke) 2. Something new, fresh, unmarked or uninfluenced. Clean slate: anything existing undisturbed in its original pure state,an opportunity for a fresh start. "Tabula Rasa Installation" of NM28: A new,fresh,unmarked or uninfluenced “blank slate" installation of NM28, i.e. no modifications, personal settings,add-ons,extensions,host file,DNS filtering etc. or anything else that could interfere with PayPal.

@Tihiy This problem still occurs in 3.9.14, I use compact mode and Rectify11 msstyles.

BTW, I do think PayPal is going a bit overboard here. Think about it: you (eventually) have to provide a correct user ID and password, then pass the 2FA challenge - so what's the point of a captcha? To make sure that, if anyone hacks into your account, at least it's a human? "Oh, thank goodness! All my money was stolen by a real person, and not a bot! What a relief!" And in my case, the captcha came up first, so all a hacker would have to do is solve the captcha and then turn on the bot! To be fair, perhaps the captcha comes up again after each unsuccessful login attempt, so that wouldn't work. But if so, you still don't need a captcha on the first login attempt! And it's not even one of Google's reCaptchas. If it were, I'd just guess that PayPal was getting paid by Google to put the reCaptcha up and help Google train their AI. I think some of these sites think that the more "security-adjacent" hurdles they throw in your path, the more "secure" they are - or at least, the more secure you'll think they are (security theater) - when in fact all it does is make them more inconvenient to use.

On this PayPal thing, I think everyone is making a lot of unwarranted assumptions here. First, I don't think the captcha is the same thing as the security challenge. From your description, it sounds to me like the captcha works, but then, PayPal tries to load the "security challenge," which fails. Second, I don't think either of those things has anything to do with the 2FA method you choose. In my case, the captcha is the very first thing to come up. Then comes the "security challenge," which, for me, fails on the latest St 55 (even with a clean profile). I never even get to a login screen, so PayPal doesn't even know for sure who I am or what my preferred 2FA method is. It just fails to load the security challenge. That's all that happens. Other people may get these things in a different order. I'm just pointing out that in my case, I can't possibly be getting the security challenge because PayPal thinks I chose an inferior 2FA method. I don't think anyone else is either. If PayPal thought that poorly of email 2FA, they wouldn't offer it in the first place. (BTW, there are ways to hack SMS 2FA too, such as by malware on the phone that forwards the 2FA text to the attacker. And the security of an email account can be anywhere from poor to very good, depending on everything from how good your password is, to whether you also have 2FA on your email account!) Keep in mind there could be other things blocking the security challenge besides the browser or browser add-ons, such as a hosts file, PiHole on the network, etc. So to be sure, you may need to try a more modern browser. In my case, I can log in successfully using r3dfox (Win 7+ only; if you're on XP, try Supermium instead), so I know in my case it's an issue with St 55 (at least, the latest version). And the captcha is still the very first thing to come up, before it even asks for my ID.

There is still the possibility that Mozilla might extend ESR 115 for another 6 months.

These work in 7 so therefore should also work in 8.1 -- https://github.com/e3kskoy7wqk/Chromium-for-windows-7

You have to use the latest preset called "Step 1 nlite reducer.7z" from 2025.08.20 and the "del_addon_full_v2.7z"! A Setup red error in event viewer -> system like this meaning your installation might have issues (usually com+ and ms shadow copy provider etc.) On the other hand errors in setupapi.log like wuweb.dll you have mention, have no real consequences if you have use nlite which somehow patch syssetup.dll. Wuweb (and others) register from inside au.inf, but au.inf and all the rest automatic updates dlls like wuweb was erased by nlite preset which also erased the coresponding entries from inside syssetup.inf. Alas, nlite does not know anything comming from XPSP3_QFE_UpdatePack_20210829_Pro.7z which include wuweb.cat as new catalog for the new wuweb.dll. nlite knows wuweb.dll (which erased) but doesn't know anything for its wuweb.cat catalog. nlite also leave entries in DEFLTWK cdm.dll etc. that's why I try to surplus it with del_addon_full_v2. It is a work in progress I guess.. If you only delete a dll after the setup, then registry will continue to reference it. So, it will try to load those keys and others in memory only to find that when it try to load the now deleted dll from the disk, that dll was deleted.

Can anyone suggest a secure browser and email client for an acquaintance who has a "plain vanilla" 64-bit Windows 8.1 machine? I am aware that Mozilla is ending support for the legacy FF ESR v115.x browser for Win 7 / Win 8.x in Sep 2025 and that FF ESR v115.27.0 (rel. 19-Aug-2025) will be the last FF browser released by Mozilla for these older OSs. I recommended they try r3dfox (a fork of modern Firefox) or Supermium (a fork of modern Chrome) but would appreciate knowing if someone has another suggestion for a supported browser that still runs on a Win 8.1 OS. I also recommended Thunderbird ESR for an email client, but I have no idea if Mozilla as made any similar announcements about dropping support for Thunderbird in the near future for Win 7 / Win 8.x OSs, or if there are other email clients that still support Win 8.1. ----------- Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.6218 * Firefox v142.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.25070.5-1.1.25070.4 * Malwarebytes Premium v5.3.6.205-138.0.5346 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783 * MS Outlook 2019

StartAllBack 3.9.14 StartAllBack 3.9.13

I have not been following the back-and-forth on PayPal "slide mouse". I can only report that it DOES WORK on first attempt in my OLDER version of Serpent.

You only cite "Serpent 52.9". I use Serpent 52.9 *daily* (for texting from home computer as I do not own a phone!). Therefore, I feel compelled to report, as a *daily* user of "Serpent 52.9", that I do not get this small save-file window. I personally use the below version as I have always had issues with SESSION-RESTORE not working in anything "newer". I have not tried any "newer" version in the last couple of month or so because doing so has somewhat become a "waste of my time" as SESSION-RESTORE issues are never in the changelog!

i take offense to calling me stubborn for using the email option... why would they keep it there for the last 20 years or however long it's been, and still "today" for it being so bad. i'll try to do the phone option if i can... and what is "tabula rasa" ? i googled that a few days ago when you mentioned that, and only got results about a RPG video game.

A post install uninstallation of Automatic Updates using a batch file is problematic because wuapi.dll, Wuauserv.dll and wups2.dll are locked by winlogon.exe and cannot be easily deleted in a batch file, although it may be possible using the Sysinternals handle.exe utility. That leaves the only other option of deleting them during a reboot by adding entries in the PendingFileRenameOperations value under thew Session Manager key. This cannot be done with reg.exe because the entries need to be modified as binary data. My first attempt at a resolution of this problem involved importing a .reg file into the registry, but this ,reg file is specific to a drive letter, so my dual boot system would require two versions of the update for the C: and D: drive. Since then I have been able to include Sysinternal movefile.exe to make the required registry entries. All that is required is to specify the path of the source file and make the destination path "" to delete the source. Here is my new Automatic Updates addon including movefile. File: AutomaticUpdates_DeleteAddon.7z (Dropbox) File: AutomaticUpdates_DeleteAddon.7z (Google Drive) File: AutomaticUpdates_DeleteAddon.7z (4Shared) MD5: F8B000B410F2BB9486B4743611780693 SHA-1: C1C1BAF8F85F3E8BF0B459A61C6DBF80F4992195 Size: 60 KB Build date: 26/08/2026

It seems to me that you have added items from Automatic Updates in the preset Last Session (2025.05.14).ini so that they are deleted from the source the same as the ObsoleteFiles directive does in the integrator. I note that wuapi.dll, wups.dll, wuaueng1.dll and wuauser.dll have not been added, and thus the Automatic Updates service will still be present in the final install. Also if wuweb.dll is removed from the source it means that it cannot be registered by syssetup.dll thus leading to an error message in setuperr.log and setuplog.txt. The batch file in my addon on the other hand does a thorough job of eliminating Automatic updates leaving no entries in setuperr.log. There must be a good reason why the removal of Automatic Updates is not an option in nLite. As far as I can tell the Automatic Updates files are not dependencies of a module that needs to be registered, so I assume that Automatic Updates must be required during Windows installation. It is a long time since I did an attended install, but I seem to remember that you are given the option of updating the setup files which might require automatic updates. Also the are no instructions for installing the Automatic Updates service in the inf files in the source that could be deleted, meaning that only a post install uninstallation of the service is possible.

Hello kuja killer, You asked: "but why can i NEVER get past this horrible "slide the mouse" You may have answered your question yourself: " i've always done the email option every time for years and years" Internet security is very dynamic - what worked for years in the past must not necessarily work in the here and now. E-mail as a sort of 2-factor authentication is dubious. Consequently PayPal may have ditched it. Though it is pure speculation - you may have confused the PayPal security system with your stubborn insistence on the e-mail option. Since e-mail is insecure try the phone option - after tabula rasa installation of the latest NM28 (maybe with a different user agent).

For the Vista lovers 😽 : yt-dlp_Py3.11_Vista.7z (password: 987123). Updated today. (the XP version does not work on Vista)

Yes. My XP release is now based on Python 3.11.4 yt-dlp -v [debug] Command-line config: ['-v'] [debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs utf-8, pref cp1252, out cp1252 (No VT), error cp1252 (No VT), screen cp1252 (No VT) [debug] yt-dlp version local@2025.08.28 [1e28f6bf7] (win_x86_exe) [debug] Python 3.11.4 (CPython x86 32bit) - Windows-XP-5.1.2600-SP3 (OpenSSL 3.1.0-dev ) [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-116828-g6aafe61-Reino (fdk,setts), ffprobe N-116828-g6aafe61-Reino, phantomjs 1.9.8 [debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.23.0, brotli-1.1.0, certifi-2025.08.03, mutagen-1.47.0, requests-2.32.5, sqlite3-3.50.4, urllib3-2.5.0, websockets-15.0.1 [debug] Proxy map: {} [debug] Request Handlers: urllib, requests, websockets [debug] Plugin directories: none [debug] Loaded 1840 extractors

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband, Value type is DWORD, Value name is NumThumbnails, Data can be set to 0 If Google doesn't help

yea i get all that... but why can i NEVER get past this horrible "slide the mouse" screen... it's seriously making me so mad. there's got to be some possible way to bypass this stupid piece of garbage screen. I'm not keeping track but i must of tried over 30 times total now across all these browsers.

As a side note, the standalone Windows XP version doesn't work on Windows 7 x64 with the error pointing to GetCPFileNameFromRegistry on kernell32.dll, but no problem with the native. I used to run this version on Windows 7 x64 (as I switched from OS to OS and avoid two installs (aside this I can confirm that the Windows 7 version is slightly faster on its native platform, as you pointed out nicola)). I read quick, but would your release have support/be released after september? Thanks for your efforts nicolaasjan :)