AstroSkipper

The default search engines are inside the second omni.ja file in the subfolder browser. The exact location in this special archive file is chrome/browser/search-extensions. From there, Mypal 68 can restore its default search engines if necessary.

I read your statement again. Now, I think I have understood what you have done. You deleted one or more of the four search engines Brave, Qwant, DuckDuckGo and Mojeek in the file search.json.mozlz4, with which Mypal 68.13.7b is now delivered by @feodor2 as default, by using the extension mozlz4-edit. That doesn't work, of course. The easiest way to get rid of them is removing them in the Options dialogue of Mypal 68. If you do so, they will remain hidden until you restore the default settings one day.

@feodor2 Just to give you a little feedback. Your modified code snippets for disabling the signature verification are working great. I edited my config.js file and have been using this modified file starting from the day you posted the changes here and since then, no warnings happened again. I even created unsigned theme files and could install them without any warnings or problems, too. Thus, I was able to revive my black cat theme which was originally an animated theme and could no longer process the animated png file inside the xpi file. I changed some code inside it, and now it can animate the black cat again as it once was, and all that without any warnings about signature verification. In any case, I am able to modify extensions and themes to my needs in Mypal 68 from now on as has long been possible in the legacy UXP browsers. Many thanks again for that!

Ok! That's indeed a normal behaviour of modern Firefox versions. In any case, all added, custom search engines remain the same after restarting Mypal 68 if nothing bad or unusual happens.

@feodor2 Thanks for pointing to the file addonStartup.json.lz4! That was definitely the culprit. Inside this file, there were leftovers from the removed search engines Bing, Wikipedia and stp (Startpage). Apparently, my profile wasn't as fresh as I initially thought. In any case, I removed these obsolete entries by editing this file manually, and now the error messages have gone. I prefer the way of manual editing method as it gives me full control about what to be or not to be removed. Thanks again!

I can't confirm any crashes or problems after editing the file search.json.mozlz4 using the extension mozlz4-edit. What I have edited remains the same no matter how often I restart Mypal 68. Actually, there is no need to add anything to the profile when launching. If so, your installation or your profile is presumably faulty. But keeping backups is always a good idea.

BTW, I transfer custom search engines by directly editing the code I posted above. I use the mozlz4-edit extension for this. One can read more about that in this post: Cheers, AstroSkipper

This is the complete code of the file search.json.mozlz4 when a new profile is created by Mypal 68.13.7b and no custom search engines are added: "version": 1, "buildID": "20231117182307", "appVersion": "68.13.7", "locale": "en-US", "visibleDefaultEngines": [ "brave", "mojeek", "qwant", "ddg" ], "metaData": { "current": "", "hash": "vsw9lpcrIqUXb8DoqAMOZ5+t3n9VXVmWaKAKWE7sH4A=" }, "engines": [ { "_name": "Brave", "_shortName": "brave", "_loadPath": "[other]addEngineWithDetails:brave@search.mozilla.org", "description": "Brave search", "__searchForm": "https://search.brave.com/search?q={searchTerms}", "_iconURL": "moz-extension://7581c399-ad46-4ca2-b564-ab9f6db7b827/favicon.svg", "_iconMapObj": { "{}": "moz-extension://7581c399-ad46-4ca2-b564-ab9f6db7b827/favicon.svg" }, "_metaData": { "alias": "@brave", "order": 1 }, "_urls": [ { "template": "https://search.brave.com/search", "rels": [], "resultDomain": "search.brave.com", "params": [ { "name": "q", "value": "{searchTerms}" } ] } ], "_isBuiltin": true, "queryCharset": "UTF-8", "extensionID": "brave@search.mozilla.org" }, { "_name": "Mojeek", "_shortName": "mojeek", "_loadPath": "[other]addEngineWithDetails:mojeek@search.mozilla.org", "description": "Mojeek Search", "__searchForm": "https://www.mojeek.com/search?query={searchTerms}", "_iconURL": "moz-extension://aa48309a-d263-4ad1-94fb-87d641d35936/favicon.png", "_iconMapObj": { "{}": "moz-extension://aa48309a-d263-4ad1-94fb-87d641d35936/favicon.png" }, "_metaData": { "alias": "@mj", "order": 4 }, "_urls": [ { "template": "https://www.mojeek.com/search", "rels": [], "resultDomain": "www.mojeek.com", "params": [ { "name": "q", "value": "{searchTerms}" } ] } ], "_isBuiltin": true, "queryCharset": "UTF-8", "extensionID": "mojeek@search.mozilla.org" }, { "_name": "Qwant", "_shortName": "qwant", "_loadPath": "[other]addEngineWithDetails:qwant@search.mozilla.org", "description": "Search Qwant", "__searchForm": "https://www.qwant.com/?client=brz-moz&q={searchTerms}", "_iconURL": "moz-extension://f8746c07-94aa-4187-aac6-90374ce6b405/favicon.ico", "_iconMapObj": { "{}": "moz-extension://f8746c07-94aa-4187-aac6-90374ce6b405/favicon.ico" }, "_metaData": { "alias": null, "order": 2 }, "_urls": [ { "template": "https://www.qwant.com/", "rels": [], "resultDomain": "www.qwant.com", "params": [ { "name": "client", "value": "brz-moz" }, { "name": "q", "value": "{searchTerms}" } ] }, { "template": "https://api.qwant.com/api/suggest/", "rels": [], "resultDomain": "api.qwant.com", "type": "application/x-suggestions+json", "params": [ { "name": "client", "value": "opensearch" }, { "name": "q", "value": "{searchTerms}" } ] } ], "_isBuiltin": true, "queryCharset": "UTF-8", "extensionID": "qwant@search.mozilla.org" }, { "_name": "DuckDuckGo", "_shortName": "ddg", "_loadPath": "[other]addEngineWithDetails:ddg@search.mozilla.org", "description": "Search DuckDuckGo", "__searchForm": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}", "_iconURL": "moz-extension://cba46309-6ad1-4668-b28c-107d0a25f089/favicon.ico", "_iconMapObj": { "{}": "moz-extension://cba46309-6ad1-4668-b28c-107d0a25f089/favicon.ico" }, "_metaData": { "alias": null, "order": 3 }, "_urls": [ { "template": "https://duckduckgo.com/", "rels": [], "resultDomain": "duckduckgo.com", "params": [ { "name": "q", "value": "{searchTerms}" }, { "name": "t", "value": "ffcm", "purpose": "contextmenu" }, { "name": "t", "value": "ffab", "purpose": "keyword" }, { "name": "t", "value": "ffsb", "purpose": "searchbar" }, { "name": "t", "value": "ffhp", "purpose": "homepage" }, { "name": "t", "value": "ffnt", "purpose": "newtab" } ] }, { "template": "https://ac.duckduckgo.com/ac/", "rels": [], "resultDomain": "ac.duckduckgo.com", "type": "application/x-suggestions+json", "params": [ { "name": "q", "value": "{searchTerms}" }, { "name": "type", "value": "list" } ] } ], "_isBuiltin": true, "queryCharset": "UTF-8", "extensionID": "ddg@search.mozilla.org" } ] } As you can see, there are only four search engines contained: Brave, Qwant, DuckDuckGo and Mojeek. That are the ones with which Mypal 68.13.7b is now delivered by you as default. In version 68.13.4b, there was still Startpage, and in version 68.13.2b, there were still Bing and Wikipedia. Accordingly, there must still be leftovers in your code that refer to manifest.json files that no longer exist. Unfortunately, from a purely linguistic point of view, I can't grasp this content of your reply. Perhaps, you could formulate that a little more clearly. Thanks in advance! Kind regards, AstroSkkipper

Update notification! Panda Free Antivirus has been updated on 31.10.2023 and is now of version 22.02.00. Thus, I'll update my article and my list in terms of Panda Free Antivirus. Maybe. one of you can test the new version under Windows XP SP3 32 bit only to be sure it is still compatible as advertised here: https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/homeusers/windows-antivirus/ This is a quotation from this website: Such a confirmation would be great. Because, as we all already know, the proof is in the pudding. Cheers, AstroSkipper

I am now running 17 scripts (uc.js files) and 13 CSS stylesheets (css files) just to revert the things the developers have done to the Firefox version which Mypal 68 is based on. Not to mention the extensions that I have installed to get back previous features. I have also modified themes and deactivated signature verification. Some CSS code has been created or modified by myself and some script files, too. But now, the feeling is much better when using Mypal 68. Cheers, AstroSkipper

And should anyone now ask whether there's an easier way, then my answer is: No! Thank the Firefox developers who have made everything worse over the last few years! That's one of the reasons I love so much the legacy UXP browsers.

Unfortunately, copying and pasting the file search.json.mozlz4 is not a solution due to the search engines that are delivered with Mypal 68. These search engines are then displayed without their icons. The perfect method to transfer custom search engines from one profile to another one is using the extension mozlz4-edit by copying the code of the desired, custom search engine entries from the file search.json.mozlz4 of the source profile and pasting it into the file search.json.mozlz4 of the target profile. Of course, the syntax and the structure of the search.json.mozlz4 file must be observed. I did it, and it works perfectly. Cheers, AstroSkipper

After the recent changes to the search engines in the last versions of Mypal, @feodor2 seems not to have removed some obsolete entries regarding Bing, Wikipedia and stp (Startpage) from his code which lead to errors in the Browser Console. Here is a small excerpt from my Browser Console in Mypal 68.13.7b: Maybe, this can be removed with the next release. Cheers, AstroSkipper

Update notification! Malware Hunter has been updated on 11.12.2023 and is now available in version 1.176.0.796. It is still listed to be compatible with Windows XP. Accordingly, I will update my article as soon as I can confirm its XP-compatibility. Cheers, AstroSkipper

And since my time is also limited, and I cannot test every programme in depth, I would be very pleased if as many Windows XP users as possible would install the programmes presented here, even if only for testing purposes, and report on their experiences. This is valuable information and will help others to decide how to organise their protection under this old operating system. This thread also needs regular information about the current status of all programmes presented here so that the lists from the posts #2, #3 and #4 are always as up-to-date as possible. Thanks in advance!

Just a reminder! This thread is about security programmes targeting Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit). Reporting testing results targeting other operation systems should be done in the corresponding threads. Otherwise, this would only lead to misunderstandings and confusion here in this thread. Nevertheless, I do state the full system requirements for every programme I write an article about here. However, that does not mean that experiences with other operating systems should be posted here in this thread. Only what relates to Windows XP is relevant here. Therefore, I welcome any experiences related to security programmes under the operating system we are exclusively talking about in this thread. Cheers, AstroSkipper

I use Mypal 68 regularly and have not noticed any unusual behaviour so far. If you want to be on the safe side, use a network sniffer to identify and analyse all incoming and outgoing connections of a browser. And it doesn't matter whether it is Mypal 68 or this Chrome 115 which is actually the topic here. However, this strange behaviour was already observed when using certain versions of Chrome browsers. Any problems observed in terms of Mypal 68 should be then posted in a corresponding thread, of course.

What is particularly perfidious is that the guys from Wise have probably deliberately hidden the information about the update status in order to avoid negative feedback. In previous versions, this update status was available. I consider this to be dubious and interpret this concealment tactic as a pretence of a sense of security on the part of the user. This is definitely a no-go.

Thank you for the flowers! That's good to hear.

Update notification! Both versions of my Root Certificate and Revoked Certificate Updater for offline use have been updated and are now of 11/28/2023. You can find them in the section 11.2.4. Downloads related to Root Certificate Updates in the first post of this thread. Cheers, AstroSkipper

And one thing is clear. My investigations in terms of Wise Anti Malware are complete. I will no longer install this programme under Windows XP 32-bit.

Where the programme saves its data. For example, use Total Commander to search your system partition for the string "Wise"! It's been months ago, so I can't tell you the exact locations at this point.

The chances are even worse under Windows XP 64-bit. After my deep testing, I personally know that using Wise Anti Malware under Windows XP 32-bit is no option anymore. This picture is unfortunately worthless. You have to look for the date and version of the downloaded definition updates. If the programme does not offer any information, you have to look inside Wise Anti Malware's folders.

Congratulations! So at least, it is still working under Windows Vista. But under Windows XP, it doesn't work anymore. To be sure that you have the most recent definition updates their date is very important. Not that they are from 2019 or something like that. Check if they are really from today!

That was the version I tested first. No chance! It doesn't work anymore under Windows XP. The updating and the initialisation of the scan engine fail there. Therefore, Wise Anti Malware has to be considered abandoned under Windows XP, unfortunately.