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mo832

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Posts posted by mo832

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    I think I found the problem!!  :thumbup

    The first thing I did when the problem started was to go to about:config and look for anything related to "smoothing". Whatever was there did not fix anything, so I moved on to other areas. Today, I had the impulse to go back and scour about:config line by line to see if anything would look to be related.

    I searched on "font" and see a bunch of lines related to gfx.* , I played with a bunch of them, toggled, changed values, etc., and when I found the one called gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.always_use_for_content;  it was set to default(false). I set it to true and Boom!!

    Now... I think I would have remembered if I had done this myself, even accidentally. There is almost zero chance it was changed by me. How weird would it be to assume that Panda changed this?

     

    1

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

    As has been said, check that Panda didn't install anything in Firefox.
    Check the add-ons list, and if there is anything there from Panda, try disabling it.

    No, nothing that I can see.

     

    15 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

    Other than that, I would uninstall Panda completely, and see if the problem does go away.
    If it doesn't go away it's presumably something else causing it

    Well, I am really getting more and more to believe Panda fiddled with my installed fonts. Panda itself uses a graphic font that looks very similar to how Gmail *used to* look when it was correct. It may have installed its own font and gotten rid of the one that gmail and other websites look for when rendering and now it has to approximate it with dots. If I remove Panda, I wonder if it will restore *all* elements to exactly how they were before Panda was introduced. I have my doubts.

    0

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    10 hours ago, Tangy said:

    @mo832 I don't use any of them. Why don't you do a clean install of Panda just in case.

     

    Are you saying to uninstall Panda and then install it again? Do you feel this would repair the browser alterations? I have a feeling that this type of change (which should never be made IMO to another party's software) is not something that an uninstall would go back and return to the original state. And I don't even know what the changes were so I couldn't even begin to undo them manually.

    p.s.: I am happy to take this sub-thread to another location or private if it is going too off-topic

    p.p.s:  Where would be an ideal place to get individual support? Geeks to go? Bleeping computer? MSFN?  This is a peculiar issue where one software product corrupts a separate software product and/or the OS. Potentially 3 interlocking factors. I have already posted on the Panda forum and still not a single reply. That entire forum has low activity.

    0

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted · Edited by mo832

    On 6/8/2019 at 7:13 PM, Tangy said:

    @mo832 Since you are using ff47 please read article below you might find it useful 

    https://www.ghacks.net/2016/03/21/firefox-47-tab-based-temporary-user-agent-switching/

    You can always change user agent by way of an add on

    https://legacycollector.org/firefox-addons/

    Scroll all the way down the bottom. See if any of the user agent add ons available install on your browser.

    In About : config , Do not forget to set xpinstall.signatures.required to false. ( Can't remember when the signed add ons policy was implemented )

     

     

     

     

     

    Thank you. I tried this (the test tab idea) and it did not change anything.  The only thing that has worked so far is to check off the setting in FF options that says "allow pages to choose their own fonts...". Then I get a manually chosen, "crisp" display of arial font. But it messes up other pages with custom text.

    I wonder if there is a way to set that font checkbox  by individual tabs? I have only noticed one global setting for all tabs and windows.

     

    *** Also***  I just noticed something new. It is not only for gmail. It happens even on this site (msfn.org) as I am viewing now.  I suspect it will happen on every site with a new "tablet style" custom graphic font. I don't use that XP ff 47 for much surfing anymore, just my gmail and other light things, so I never tried to access this site with the new Panda revision in place. Since I was trying to test the fonts using this board as a guide I displayed this site on the old browser and noticed the font also displays jagged edges. Now we know it is not only a google/gmail issue, it is a general font or browser issue, which I am convinced was instigated by Panda. I don't know why it had to go digging into my settings :( .

    Please remember.... even with my existing setup and without changing any user agent or special tweaks, this all worked fine a few days ago... before Panda.

    edit: The more I think about this, the more I suspect Panda deleted one or more of my system fonts. I have seen this before with other software, if it can't find its favorite font in the system, it simulates the closest one

    0

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    15 hours ago, Tangy said:

    What about if you changed user-agent to NT6.1  firefox 61.0 or even 60.9 or 52.9 ?

     

    I'm willing to try this but I will need to understand how you mean the above.

    - are you saying to manually change the user agent string without actually installing a different browser? (I purposely did not upgrade firefox when some of my critical addons stopped working)

    - if yes, how to do this?

    - what is the thinking behind why this would fix the problem?

    Thanks :)

    0

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

    Many sites download their own fonts. I suspect Gmail is among them. Panda may be blocking the font download; I don't know anything about it but you might look for a setting related to downloading fonts.

    That's an interesting thought. I tried to "stop" panda antivirus and restarted firefox, but it did not help. Do you think this "blocking" would continue even if panda was not running at the time? Perhaps a permanent setting tweak when the program was installed?

    0

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    So I have a unique problem now. I know this is off topic and not the best place to ask this question, but I am hoping someone can direct me to the best place to ask the question and maybe have some hint as to why it is happening, since it seems to be directly related to mse/xp.

    As I noted above, I disable MSE and installed Panda. Everything appeared normal but now I notice when I run Firefox (ver 47) and go to gmail, the text renders in this weird jagged low-res format, as opposed to the new-look "tablet style" app text/font. This seems to be a direct effect of changing the AV software, since I made no other changes.

    Can anyone offer any hints or tips?

    0

    Which Antiviruses are Known for a Fact to be Working on XP SP3 as of 2019?

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    Well, based on the horror stories of Mathwiz and Dave-H, I decided to take the "chicken" approach and disabled the AM service and the MSE process in msconfig just to stop it from running on startup, and then did a restart to see if it would take effect. As expected, I got the red shield warning saying the MSE is reporting disabled. Then I downloaded and installed the Panda Security Free Antivirus. I didn't know if it would install, also recalling the comments that some people have success and others don't. To my delight, it installed normally, and to my pleasant surprise the install was pretty quick and straightforward. So far, so good, but I can say it "seems" to be much lighter.

    I hope this lasts and provides effective service. We'll see.

    Thanks to all of you for your helpful insights!! :)

     

    0

    Microsoft security essentials and Windows XP

    in Windows XP

    Posted

    3 hours ago, heinoganda said:
      14 hours ago, mo832 said:

    I once again need the custom updater for new wget version 1.9 . I tried 1.9 on the good machine and it worked, tried the same file on the problem machine and it gave me the httpdl.exe error.  (already have the file I need in my PM)

    3 hours ago, heinoganda said:

    On the 2nd of May 2019 I sent you a PN where a suitable variant of the MSE Definition Updater Version 1.9 is offered, have a look at our conversation! :yes:
    By the way, at the moment you are the only user who needs this variant and this variant is made available after an update via PN.
    (Since I do not want to overflow my mailbox, very outdated conversations sometimes have to be deleted)

    :)

     

     

    Please note I did state that I already have the file (I referenced my PM earlier). ^^^ :):). Thank you!, I was more interested in my second question, which is why is there no variant which can adapt to any user, if you make the one that works for me (newer wget), why would it not work for everyone also? If another user installs the variant custom for me, would they get errors? There is no possible way to make a universal compatible .exe so that all of us can use the same one and no custom version is needed?

    0

    Microsoft security essentials and Windows XP

    in Windows XP

    Posted · Edited by mo832

    On 5/2/2019 at 4:20 PM, heinoganda said:

    In your case yes, any customizations will be made to the MSEDEFUPD.bat and MSEDEFUPD_INT.bat files. Actually, I do not use MSE at all, just to test in my VM to eliminate any errors in the Microsoft Security Essentials Definition Updater. If there are no further suspensions, it will stay with version 1.9.

    :)

    I once again need the custom updater for new wget version 1.9 . I tried 1.9 on the good machine and it worked, tried the same file on the problem machine and it gave me the httpdl.exe error.  (already have the file I need in my PM)

    OR, can you explain to me how I can modify the file myself so I don't need to always ask for a special variant the next time you update?

    ****** why cannot you post just one variant for everybody for each version release? Would the special variant with the new wget fail on everyone but me? Is there a variant that is fully forward/backward compatible for all users ??

    :)

     

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