
Mathwiz
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We use SEP at my workplace. Unfortunately I've found it to be way too paranoid, triggering on various files from @roytam1's browser builds, for instance. This is a problem because if one of his browsers truly were infected by malware, you'd ignore it thinking it was just another false positive! It's probably a good AV for someone who only runs well-known software, but I think it'd be too much of a hassle for most of the folks in this forum.
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I remember that issue being discussed in the XP browser thread circa January. Maybe now's a good time to grab the latest reasonably stable build of Edge, before Google ruins it.
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MCCES = MSSECES? See and subsequent discussion. To make a long story short, no one figured it out, and we all pretty much gave up and moved on to other free AV products.
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
@i430VX, that would be great. It was fairly easy downloading an index page from the server and filtering the lines of HTML code for the files I was interested in, but it was pretty tricky figuring out how to parse the file name out of the HTML; I was hoping my solution would be of use, especially after your possible server compromise. (Glad that turned out to be nothing, BTW.) Regarding choice.exe, I was lucky to have upgraded from 98 to XP, so I still had 98's old choice.com to fall back on. (That explains those odd lines near the top of the batch file.) But folks who never had a DOS-based version of Windows and started on 32-bit XP, 2000, or NT were out of luck. It's hard to write user-friendly batch files without it; although I do remember reading about a trick from an old issue of Computer Shopper: you have the batch file display the menu, then change to a directory specifically for that menu, then just drop back to the command line - but in the menu's directory, you have batch files named 1.bat, 2.bat, etc. So the user just types their choice and presses Enter, and the PC runs the batch file for that menu choice! Oh, the hoops we used to have to jump through.... -
My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Good: Help / Submit Feedback in Serpent 52 now opens this thread instead of forum.palemoon.org. Welcome to the thread, Serpent 52 users! -
I generally agree - after all, that's what I've done myself. But the remaining free offerings tend to be either heavy in terms of resource use, or else they lack important features like real-time scanning. There may be other concerns too. Kaspersky is, of course, Russian; after all we've learned in the past few years, it's reasonable to wonder whether they might be required to leave a few holes for the "Internet Research Agency" to exploit. So if one has older, less powerful hardware (which might be why they're sticking with XP in the first place), it might be reasonable to resort to a combination of MSE and an on-demand scanner like MalwareBytes free version. There's always a situation where what sounds crazy to you and me makes sense to someone else.
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
@roytam1 has built KM 74 and NM 26.5 for Win2K. Forked from FF 24 IIRC, both should use fewer resources than NM 27 but work with more sites than Retrozilla. I'm attaching a batch file I use to download & extract @roytam1's browser builds each week. It's not a full installer like @i430VX's - it doesn't create any shortcuts - but it runs through the directory listings provided by Roytam's server and finds the latest file. Requires wget 1.18 to connect to Roytam's server using https: and download the files, and 7-Zip to extract them. Still needs a little work; if I make any changes I'll re-upload it. Edit: Made a few small changes: The choice.exe in Win 7 requires a slightly different syntax than the choice.com from Win 98 I had been using. New .bat file should now be compatible with either version. (BTW, why doesn't Win XP have a "choice" command, requiring you to import one from an older or newer version?) Also fixed a bug: Navigator and MailNews were downloaded into C:\Program Files on a 64-bit system; now they're downloaded into C:\Program Files (x86) as they should be since they're 32-bit programs. And finally, added some code to clean things up at the end, by deleting the .7z file after extracting it. Edit 2: A few more cosmetic changes. Also fixed batch file to work even if current drive isn't the same as the %ProgramFiles% drive. Edit 3: Added an option to download the latest K-Meleon build. This was a bit tricky because the filenames for those builds don't follow the same pattern as the others. Also added a "safety valve" so 7-zip doesn't go nuts if no matching files are found (due to a bug, for instance). Edit 4: This little batch file project is getting more complicated. I added an option to download the latest Firefox 45 ESR SSE-only build. This was the trickiest one so far! One problem was that I couldn't just download the last file name in the listing any more, because that would be firefox-45.9.9 while the latest is firefox-45.9.16 or so. (The file names are sorted alphabetically, so "9" follows "16.") I realized I might soon have the same problem with palemoon-28 if it gets up to 28.10, so I wrote some new batch code to parse out the file date and download the latest file by date. That should future-proof this. Also added a feature: if a "myuseragents.js" file is in the same directory as the batch file, it will offer to install it after downloading & extracting the browser (except mailnews, of course). Tried to make it modular so I can add more "installations" of this type later. (Even this was a little tricky because K-Meleon uses a different path for .js startup files of this type than the other browsers.) Edit 5: Minor fix to above changes to get the latest K-Meleon build by date. Edit 6: Added code to install about-background.png and/or about-wordmark.svg if found in same directory as the batch file. Requires zip.exe from Info-Zip in the batch file directory or path. Final (hopefully) Edit: Batch file is now part of the .7z downloadable at http://i430vx.net/files/mathwiz/Browser Installer.7z -
@TechnoRelic just posted the link you need over at the New Moon thread; here it is: https://legacycollector.org/firefox-addons/722/index.html
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
General installation advice: just pick a directory ("C:\Program Files" is fine) and extract the .7z file for the browser of your choice into it. That will create a subdirectory (palemoon\ for New Moon, basilisk\ for Serpent) under that directory. Then create a shortcut to palemoon.exe or basilisk.exe in your Start menu and/or on your desktop. Each week when a new version comes out, you can just extract the new .7z file over the previous one. The shortcut you created will still work. If you want/need to run multiple versions (e.g., NM 27 and NM 28, or St 52 and St 55), you can create separate directories and shortcuts for each version. @i430VX's installer does this, creating a palemoonx86 directory for NM 28 and a palemoon27x86 directory for NM 27. You can put i430VX's installer in its own directory. For example, create a "C:\Program Files\Roytam Browser Installer" directory and put it there. Then just create a shortcut to it in your start menu and/or on your desktop. (Does i430VX need to create an installer for his installer?) In general, there's no need to download multiple builds of the same version (unless you're archiving them "just in case"), so if you download NM 27, you'll probably download only one of the four builds of it (64-bit, 32-bit for SSE2, 32-bit for SSE, or 32-bit for pre-SSE) each week, depending on what you need for your PC. -
I have Malware-bytes Anti-malware free v1.75. It's a good on-demand scanner. Its big weakness is that it doesn't do real-time scanning; i.e., it doesn't automatically scan anything you download or copy/load from a USB drive. You have to remember to do those things yourself, or else upgrade to the paid version. BTW, Avast hit its first false positive today, with SwiftSearch. I had downloaded the "combined" 32-/64-bit version but it looked like malware to Avast. So I downloaded the "pure" 32-bit version (which is smaller anyway). It works fine without Avast panicking.
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
I agree. If this were to be done at all, it should be done by @i430VX's installer. I could see the installer offering to download and install a few popular add-ons after extracting the browser. In theory @siria's method below would be ideal, but I'm not sure it would work in practice: That would install add-ons in a new profile anytime one is created. It may work in KM - I haven't looked - but in NM and Serpent, the defaults\profile\ folder seems to live in browser\omni.ja, and I'm not sure it's feasible to modify that file. It seems to be a nonstandard .zip format. So that leaves you with storing the downloaded add-ons in the browser\extensions\ subfolder, which means they could be disabled but not removed easily (except of course by reinstalling). The installer would need to give the user a message to that effect. -
My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
@roytam1 has a version of NM 27 for pre-SSE processors. -
Adobe Flash, Shockwave, and Oracle Java on XP (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to dencorso's topic in Windows XP
Where's @Bersaglio? I assume we can just change "192" to "207" in the links below. I'm about to give it a try anyway. Edit: Apparently works fine. (Avast did scan "plugin-container.exe" for me, but didn't find any malware!) -
My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Wasn't aware that was possible. Presumably it would work in other browsers besides KM, and one wouldn't even need to modify the source repo: put the desired .xpi files in one of those subfolders after building, then just zip the whole thing up. And CAA would be a perfect candidate - if it didn't double the size of the final .7z! So I guess we won't do that one - too bad JustOff didn't put the CAA database in the cloud. But after looking over my own rather long list of add-ons, I don't see any (except CAA) that everyone should have - especially when you consider that it's common for different users to want different versions of an add-on. Should we include uBO? If so, New Moon presumably gets the latest legacy version, but which version does Serpent 52 get: the legacy version, 1.17.4, or a newer version patched to run on it? So maybe we're overthinking this. Instead of including any add-ons in the .7z files, remember that pref that started this whole discussion - startup.homepage_override_url - that opens whenever the browser version changes? Point that to a page of commonly requested addons, then the users will see it after every update and can decide for themselves which addons (if any) they want. -
Most likely, gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.always_use_for_content was always set to false. That is the default value when FF is installed. Whatever Panda did to Firefox's font rendering, evidently setting that pref to true bypassed or overrode it somehow. So thankfully, you're back to normal now, but we may never know just exactly what happened.
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Add-ons are installed in your profile folder, not in the browser's program folder (that's how they remain installed whenever you update), so they can't be included in the same .7z file as the browser itself. That said, old versions of NoScript are readily available for download from the Classic Add-Ons Archive (which is itself an add-on). Go to https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases and click on the latest .xpi file. -
My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Just tried this page again at work, where I don't have the problematic 150% zoom setting, and everything seems to render just fine, in both NM (versions 2019-05-24 and 2019-05-30) and Serpent (versions 52.2019.05.31, 52.2019.06.07, and 55.2019.05.22), on both Win 7 and Win XP. And in official Pale Moon (version 28.5.2) on Win 7, for that matter. So the problems I was seeing earlier were apparently due to the zoom setting, which looks like this: At the normal (100%) setting, I see five of the six columns and there's an arrow which, when clicked, scrolls to the sixth column. Another arrow then appears and I can scroll back. So I'm afraid you'll need to be much more specific than: Please post a screen shot showing the problem you're seeing, because I can't see it here. -
There is an offline installer for Windows Live Essentials 2009. Just search for wlsetup 2009. FileHippo has it among others: Name: wlsetup-2009-32-all.exe Size: 141399376 bytes (134 MiB) SHA256: CB9033C1467B2A444F162299EF5D9187CC8CB7345CFA8C90C08D4C7DCF1D552F Edit: I don't see a link I trust, so I'll upload a copy to https://stevenstransport.com/wlsetup-2009-32-all.exe for anyone who wants it. Edit 2: Just realized @Mcinwwl is looking for a Polish version. Unfortunately I only have English. Maybe it'll help someone else though.
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
NM 28 changes look exactly as I intended. I missed one on St 52: the Help / Submit Feedback page still points to palemoon.org. But I can deal with that later. -
My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
https://www.subaru.com/vehicles/outback/models.html/OBK-compare-wrapper-modal doesn't seem to render quite right in Serpent 55, or in an earlier NM version (2019-05-10) either (the details are shifted rightward wrt the headings, and the chart is too wide but there's no scroll bar). So it could be a problem common to all UXP-platform browsers. Or it may just be my specific setup. I have this particular PC zoomed up to 150%, and that's caused occasional problems of this kind before. I'll try it with my more "standard" work PC Monday. -
I guess it depends on what it did. Did Panda install an add-on to Firefox? That could still be there. It could also have updated the hosts file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) to block access to certain hosts; if it happened to block the host where the fonts come from, that would cause problems too. Edit: I doubt it would change any prefs, but just in case; go into about:config and make sure gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled is set to true.
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Yes; M$ sort of added insult to injury. They weren't satisfied with just disabling future updates, thus rendering MSE useless; they also gave us a non-working uninstaller so we couldn't even get rid of the $#@$^ thing! Oh; forgot to mention that even after disabling the anti-malware service and killing the msseces.exe process, I still had to use Unlocker to completely delete the directories. I guess you wouldn't want it to be too easy for malware to do a rogue uninstall, so maybe this makes sense - but that's all the more reason the official uninstaller should work! Oh, well; at first blush I'm quite impressed with Avast. It did falsely trigger on ProxHTTPSProxyMII, but that's understandable; that is a MITM after all! I'm glad I'm one of the lucky ones Avast seems to run OK on. Probably should've ditched MSE for it years ago.
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My Browser Builds (Part 1)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
I agree that someone from MCP coming onto this thread and striking a disagreeable attitude, making threats, and generally being unpleasant, doesn't exactly predispose folks here to try to accommodate their wishes. And it's also true that to the extent there are "branding" issues with unofficial builds, they are the fault of MCP themselves, not @roytam1. So I can sort of understand having a spiteful attitude toward MCP and their demands. But I think we already decided we weren't undertaking a full rebranding of New Moon or Serpent anyhow. At this point, all we're talking about is getting rid of the "you've successfully upgraded" Web page and redirecting a few Web pages that come up when users of @roytam1's browsers use the Help menu. It's just not that big of a deal, and it's worth doing anyhow for the benefit of New Moon / Serpent users (not to mention msfn.org, which stands to gain a few more members). If it eases tensions with MCP a bit too, so much the better. (And if someone's really stubborn about it, they can switch all their prefs back in about:config anyhow.)