Dave-H
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Dave-H
-
-
4 hours ago, Tangy said:
@Dave-HYes , I do confirm your findings. Panda is fully functional !
PS : Let us monitor the situation for a few days to make sure that this is the case.
Thanks @Tangy!
Good to know that Panda seems to be OK for you as well now.
Whether it will keep working on XP long-term remains to be seen, of course, but if you have a paid version, it seems to be about the only option for XP which includes real-time scanning, albeit online rather than local, plus a firewall and protection against dodgy websites.
Let's hope it keeps going!
1 -
I've raised this with xper.
Apparently it's bots attacking the server.
Using something like (dare I say it) Cloudflare would probably prevent this, but that would cost a lot of money, which we haven't got.
😟1 -
Hmm.
I just tried pasting my image where your image should have been, and it seems to have worked!
I'll need to consult xper about this.
0 -
@NotHereToPlayGames
That balloon picture was copied and pasted into the editor and seems to have posted fine.
What actually happens when you try it?
Does it not post at all, or does it post but without the image?
1 -
-
36 minutes ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:
It is not the restriction or profile storage space.
It's the "editor" that MSFN uses. It **CHANGED** recently. Ever since the time span where xper had to manually delete "fake profiles" and whatever else was done at the time.
In this "editor" that I type this very message in, you **USED TO** be able to **PASTE** a screencap from the OS's "clipboard".
You **USED TO** be able to **PASTE** jpg/bmp/etc just by TYPING in this "editor" box and doing a "ctrl-v" from *ANY* image editor whereupon the "ctrl-c" was done from within that image editor.
NOW, the *only* way to post images is to use a hosting service or link to an image via "Other Media".
It didn't *USED TO* be that way, we could just PASTE into the "reply editor".
OK, I have now tried it on my netbook, using Supermium 144.
I'm sure my desktop at home will be the same.
It seems to work for me.
I opened my image viewer (xnview classic), opened an image, right clicked and selected 'copy'.
I then opened this reply, right-clicked, and selected 'paste'.
The image appeared as an attachment and was inserted into the post.
The keyboard shortcuts also worked.
So, I don't know why it's not working for you I'm afraid.
This is off-topic here of course, perhaps if you can't resolve it you could report it in the site issues section.
1 -
2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:
No, pasting into the reply editor NO LONGER WORKS. It used to. For many years. Just paste the contents of a "print screen" or clipboard directly into the reply editor.
It no longer works, *forcing* us to use "file hosting service BS" instead.
I don't know. I've always just browsed for my image files, added them to the attachments on the post, and inserted them into the post. You should be able to drag and drop too, but I've never tried pasting directly from the clipboard.
I'm not at home at the moment, but I will try it when I get back to my desktop machine again.
I know some members have restrictions on the number of attachments they can store, maybe you need to delete some old ones.
I can't remember what the restriction is, and I don't now have one as I'm a moderator.
😁0 -
14 minutes ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:
@xper / @Dave-H / @Tripredacus
Is it "intentional" that screencap images are no longer able to be pasted into MSFN replies ???
Not as far as I know. An image is an image, and I can't imagine that the forum software has any way of telling if something is a screencap.
It looks like you managed to do it in your subsequent post, so it was probably a temporary glitch.
We're having a lot of problems with bots at the moment apparently, which is why the forum has been a bit flakey recently.
0 -
1 hour ago, AstroSkipper said:
Which version are you currently running? 22.03.05? And do they still offer a more recent one for paid customers? And what about their support? Have you got any reply that Panda Dome is working again on Windows XP? 🤔
I'm running 22.03.05.
There is a more recent version 23, but it appears that isn't XP compatible, as if you try to install it on XP, you actually get 22.03.05 instead.
I had no reply from the direct Panda support people responding to the report forms I sent them, which didn't surprise me at all!
Nothing from the people at AnyTech365 either, which did slightly surprise me as they seemed to be pretty good.
They had said that they would let me know about ongoing support for XP.
2 -
OK, me again!
I hope I'm not jinxing it, but Panda Dome seems to be working properly again now for me on XP.
I hadn't had a stop and restart of the main service for a few days, so yesterday I removed my shortcut files exclusion.
All still seems to be working fine.Can you confirm this @Tangy?
Whether they have fixed it as a result of our reports or whether they realised the problem themselves, I do not know.
I just hope now that it keeps on working!
It does look as if XP support is still a thing for Panda Dome, at least for now!
Cheers, Dave.
4 -
Thanks!
I've now simplified my exclusions by simply excluding all files with the LNK extension from scanning.
As the folders I had excluded were all full of shortcuts, I thought this was more elegant and it still seems to work.I'm still getting occasional stops and restarts of the main Panda service, but it is usable.
All the Panda functions seem to be working fine when the service is running.
1 -
On 7/16/2026 at 3:36 PM, AstroSkipper said:
@Dave-H As you haven’t said anything about the suggestion I put forward so far, I’d like to know whether that’s an option for you, or whether limiting the online updates isn’t an option. You can always restore the cache folder once Panda support gets back to you, though I don’t really expect that to happen.
Sorry for the delay in responding again.
Nothing has changed since my last report, the program is working, with my folder exclusions applied, with only occasional stops and restarts of the main Panda service.
I can live with that in the short term.
I'm still hoping, of course, that a fix will be applied and it will all come good again.
Nobody has any definite evidence that Panda have deliberately stopped their XP version from working properly, only speculation.
I will wait a while and ring AnyTech365 again if I've heard nothing from them about this.
They will be as anxious as I am to get an answer from the Panda developers about this, I'm sure, as they will need to be able to give accurate support information to anyone else asking about this problem! Assuming that they do have a direct channel of communication to them, and it would be pretty stupid if they didn't, hopefully it won't be too long a wait for an answer, one way or the other.
4 -
I got a response from Watchguard technical support.
"At this time, we have not received any official communication indicating that Windows XP support for Panda Dome has been discontinued. Based on the information currently available, Windows XP continues to be listed as a supported operating system for the legacy Panda Dome version referenced on the Panda website.
Based on the information you have provided, this issue appears to be related to **Panda Dome**, which is a consumer (home) product. While we understand your concerns regarding the recent crashes of **PSANHost.exe** on Windows XP, we are unable to investigate or provide support for Panda Dome through WatchGuard Technical Support."So it appears that they only deal with professional business customers at Watchguard support, and they can't help private domestic customers.
I would have to use the domestic support channels for Panda support, which I've already done, of course!The guys at AnyTech365 have promised to let me know if they hear anything about the status of XP support from Panda, so all I can do is wait.
4 -
I'm using Office 2010 on XP.
0 -
25 minutes ago, AstroSkipper said:
It’s clear and obvious that Panda stopped supporting Windows XP for programme updates quite some time ago. The latest version is 22.03.05, nearly one year ago, and that was a long time ago. But to then go and break even that version via the automatic update – that’s a no-go.
And in doing so put the user’s partition at risk.
Yes indeed, but if you remember, Malwarebytes did pretty much the same thing.
They maintained version 3.5.1 for several years 'as is' for XP users and still provided pattern updates for it.
Then they pulled the plug, without any warning, and no longer provided pattern updates, although the program still worked OK.
Likewise, Panda keep 22.03.05 as their legacy version for XP users, which can still be downloaded and installed.
As long as it still works, I'm not that worried if the program files are old.This is not quite the same scenario, of course, as Panda doesn't use local pattern files for scanning, which makes it even stranger that they would suddenly break XP compatibility.
Whatever they do with the daily 'synchronisation' mechanism, it seems that has broken things. No program files have been changed as far as I can see.
2 -
Thanks @Tangy.
I would be interested to know your results.Just an update, I spoke again today to Panda's technical support people at AnyTech365.
Again, really friendly and helpful people, who knew exactly what I was talking about.They are thinking, as many here do, that Panda have actually withdrawn support for XP.
They agree that doing this by just breaking the legacy version of Panda Dome, is not a good way of doing this, especially for paying customers, and they are trying to find out whether this really is the case or whether this has been done accidentally and will be fixed, if indeed it's possible to do that.There has certainly been no change made to the system requirements on Panda's website, and the article trumpeting its XP compatibility claims to have been updated on July 1st.
They have given me a number to ring for Watchguard, Panda's parent company, so I will try giving them a ring tomorrow to see what they say about this.
5 -
Thanks, no problem!
I'm still hoping this will be fixed eventually, especially as I'm a paying customer.
I'm still getting messages in my event log that the Panda service has stopped unexpectedly and been restarted, but no actual crash messages.
It's usable, but annoying!
If nothing has happened soon, I will ring their technical support guys in the UK again and see if they know anything.
I won't be wasting my time with any more online forms!
2 -
2 hours ago, modnar said:
About panda acting up, same as before, but now crappier: service crashes and even on occasions with no service crashes now sistem also becomes very slow while clicking through start menu, e.g. recent documents. Even doing regular tasks, opening e.g. Task Manager I had to wait around 1 minute before it would open. And get this: panda decided it's king of the system somehow and Diskeeper that I use could not even save fragmentation prevented statistics for the current day. The next day it showed as "---------" (none). Unglaublich!
Anyhow, applying their panda-b-gone uninstaller things are finally making sense.
Assuming you haven't already uninstalled Panda, could you try excluding from scanning the folders I detailed in my earlier post?
I would just be interested to know if this helps the problem on your system.I'm still getting occasional stops and starts of the main Panda service, and I'm trying to find out exactly what is triggering them.
Again, not a fix, just a better understanding of where the mechanism is now failing.Incidentally, Panda's online support forms are pretty useless, as once you've submitted one, you are supposed to be able to add new information to it by clicking on the link in the e-mail it sends you. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. When you submit the revised form, you just get an error message that the e-mail and customer number don't match any current user!
I've had to submit two further forms from scratch to give them more information.
4 -
Back again.
I'm cautiously confident that I've found another workaround for the problem with Panda Dome, and this one appears to have stuck.I was puzzled as to why the crashes, although sometimes apparently at random, could be triggered at will, at least on my machine.
One thing which nearly always triggered an immediate crash, even if the system had been running for some time without any, was to click the Windows 'Start' button.This led me to think that there was some issue with Windows Explorer which was triggering the crash.
One other clue was that one of the first things I noticed was that if I clicked Start, even if it didn't crash, the user-added shortcuts were a blank box, only populating after several seconds.
I tried excluding Explorer from scanning, but that made no difference.I then tried excluding my whole system drive from scanning.
Hey presto, no more crashes!So, by a process of elimination, I eventually narrowed it down to the folders which were triggering the crashes when they were scanned.
I now have three folders excluded from scanning –Documents and Settings\[Username]\Start Menu
Documents and Settings\[Username]\SendTo
Documents and Settings\[Username]\RecentSo far this has stopped the regular crashes, and Panda has updated without them coming back again.
This is pure speculation, but what I suspect happened here is that Panda rolled out an update which broke compatibility with the Windows XP Explorer, which is quite different from that on later versions of Windows, of course.When Panda tried to scan those folders, like the 'Recent' folder being scanned when 'Documents' is clicked on the Start Menu, this triggered a crash.
This is of course only a workaround, not a fix, and the problem could come back at any time, but at least on my system it seems to have fixed it for now.
There is a security issue with excluding system folders from scanning, of course, but as the folders concerned only contain shortcuts, I would think it's pretty minimal.If anyone else still has a malfunctioning installation of Panda Dome installed, I would be interested to know if this works for them.
4 -
That's great, but as you say, it has to be more than just you and me!
Especially good that they now have reports from two different countries.
👍1 -
-
Panda 22 is still warning me about dodgy website links embedded in other sites, so I guess the protection is still OK at the moment.
Do you have a link to the offline installer for 21, should I need to use it?
1 -
Oh I'll certainly give it a try if I can't rescue my present installation.
I still have an open support case about it!
If nothing comes of that, trying version 21 will be my next move.
Strange that an older version would apparently be happy with the same update files which apparently crash the later version, though.
0 -
I've now tried as a test removing the cache folder completely from my Panda installation.
Rather unexpectedly, the program has not recreated it.
It's been running for ages now like that with no crashes, but it's not updating, presumably because it has nowhere to put the files!
Doing a manual update from the option in the settings does nothing.I guess I could leave it like that, but of course, like the version of Malwarebytes I used on XP for years, it will eventually become useless for protection because of no updates.
I tried Avast on my system a few years ago and never got it to work on my desktop system.
Even the supposedly compatible version for XP would not run, its core service obstinately refused to start, reason unknown.I even worked with Avast's technical support people about it, and even they couldn't determine what the problem was.
I tried a test install on my netbook under XP, and that worked perfectly, so what the problem was with the desktop remains a mystery.
2
ArcticFoxie/NotHereToPlayGames -- 360Chrome v13.5.2036 rebuild 1
in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Posted
Thanks @jumper it looks as if it's still working for you too.
I will ask xper (he's on holiday at the moment) if he can suggest why it may not be working for some members.
