Dave-H

Yes, the option should be there if you click the "change settings" link on the left hand side, down at the bottom of that settings page. There's certainly an option there for me to switch back to Windows Update if I want to. Of course I'm sure you can always go straight to Microsoft Update anyway by using this link - http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

Link doesn't work, whatever it is!

The "Custom UserAgent String" add-on seems to do the job! I now have the default UA set to normal, and just send a different one to Facebook, so the videos work properly. All seems fine, but I'll be back if I find any other problems, and thanks for everyone's help as always!

One thing I've found straight away with the new arrangement is that going to the Firefox add-ons page now tells me that most of the add-ons aren't compatible with my version of Firefox! It fact is was quite frightening to find out just how many add-ons will not work with Firefox 57. There's going to be tears and tantrums from many Firefox users later this month mark my words! I will try to find an add-on that will allow UA spoofing on a site by site basis, as that seems to be the best answer. I can then change the UA only on sites that need it changed, as I used to do with Opera 12.

Classic Shell is wonderful (and no, I don't work for them ). It's one of those programs that's so good IMO that you can't believe that it's actually free! It was the only thing that made Windows 8/8.1 usable for me.

Doesn't work for me with Windows NT 5.1 in the UA. Like Facebook, it then wants to use Flash. Do extensions like User Agent Switcher allow site by site UA changes? Looks like Firefox 52ESR has a short stay of execution until next June.

Sadly not, Facebook wants to use the Flash Player for videos again with that UA. I guess it's sniffing the OS version as well as (or instead of) the Firefox version. Is there any way, preferably without using an extension, of changed the UA just for a specific site? You can to do that with Opera 12, but of course you can do a lot of things with Opera 12 that you can't do in any other browser!

Just to come back on this, I eventually restored the "Connect" app by doing a repair reinstall of Windows 10, which I guess is the only way to do it! I was then still getting the error messages on every boot about the system being unable to uninstall the Miracast app. I found the source of the problem eventually by a registry search, which I'll pass on for anyone else seeing this. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx\AppxAllUserStore\Deleted\EndOfLife There will be an entry for the Miracast app there, which shows how many times the system has tried to remove it, so it looks as if the system is trying to delete it on boot as "End of Life" for some reason. I deleted its entry, and the errors went away. Why it was trying to delete Miracast I have no idea, I can only assume it's because my system doesn't support it. Miracast appears in the apps list when viewed with Powershell, and it says it's OK, but there is no installed folder listed (it should be in C:\Windows\Miracast, which doesn't exist on my system) so I've no idea what its status actually is. Anyway it doesn't seem to be doing any harm, and at least the error messages have now gone away, let's hope they stay that way!

I'm less concerned about websites generally thinking you're not using XP as I am about Mozilla thinking that, as they haven't yet said whether they will keep on supporting 52ESR beyond its normal life expectancy. They did say they would make a decision based on the number of users that they detected were still using XP or Vista. I assume that changing the user agent will not change the data that Firefox sends back to Mozilla, so hopefully this will have no impact on that. Going to Mozilla's website now tells me I'm using a pre-release version of Firefox!

Thank you so much guys! Spoofing the user agent has completely fixed it! I love this forum so much..........

Well I can give it a try, but will it sync with my other Firefox installations? EDIT: I just answered that for myself, and the answer is I'm sure "no"! A bit of a non-starter for me in that case I'm afraid as I need sync with my other Firefox installations. I might install it anyway just to see if i like it!

Oh dear, so it sounds like it is a problem for everyone, I guess Facebook have now dropped support for the Primetime plugin. As you say, I suspect that YouTube won't be far behind.

Further experimentation seems to indicate that the Primetime plugin has stopped working for me on Facebook completely. If I block Facebook from using the Flash Player, the videos don't play at all in my newsfeed, and I just get a grey box where they should be if I click on them. There are no error messages. Anyone? I'd just like to know if this is happening for others or whether it's just me!

I've just noticed that Facebook videos have gone back to using the Flash Player for some reason. I haven't knowingly changed anything. YouTube still seems to be using HTML5. Has this happened to anyone else? I thought that Facebook videos had become a bit clunky, and some are not now playing automatically either, but I'm not sure exactly when this changed.

I had an error message constantly in my event logs that Windows was trying to uninstall the Miracast app and failing, so I decided to try removing it myself. Unfortunately I misunderstood things and I used "install_wim_tweak" to remove the "Connect" app by mistake! This app is called "Microsoft-PPIProjection-Package". I then realised that what I should have deleted was "Windows.MiracastView"! I deleted that and the errors went away, but I now want to reinstall the "Connect" app, but I'm finding this very difficult. I found its folder in C:\Windows\SystemApps was empty (presumably deleted by install_wim_tweak) so I re-added the files from my install.wim. I then tried reinstalling by running Add-AppxPackage -register "C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.PPIProjection_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode in Powershell, thinking this would restore it. It didn't work, I just got a message saying - "Rejecting a request to register from appxmanifest.xml because the manifest is not in the package root". As far as I can see the relevant appxmanifest.xml is exactly where it should be, matching all the other folders in the SystemApps folder. Anyone any idea what I'm doing wrong? There don't seem to be an file permissions or ownership issues. Thanks, Dave.

OK, well in that case try downloading just the IE8 Cumulative Update from here, install it manually, and try scanning again.

If you had read back in this thread, which you presumably didn't, you would have seen that this is a known issue going back now many months. One of my last scans took many hours to complete, another took several days! It appears to be being caused by any Office updates that are included, and some have put the finger on the IE8 updates too. Now support for Office before version 2007 has ended, it seems likely that this will now improve, but we won't know until next month. At the moment, you need to download and install manually any Office updates, and the IE8 update too for good measure. After that the scan should take the normal time after which you can install any remaining updates using the normal update process.

Thanks, I had already downloaded it, I just wondered whether it would appear as an automatic update or not. I'll install it manually. @dencorso Ha, ha!

Will KB4019276 be offered via Windows Update does anyone know, or will it always have to be installed manually?

LOL! I'll see what happens next time. I still suspect that it was the Office updates that were the real villain of the piece, simply because MS Update wasn't expecting them to be there on a POSReady machine. The IE8 updates are still standard, so I don't see why they would throw the updating system. Only time will tell.........

Well my netbook finally showed me the list of updates on IE8 sometime during the night last night, after scanning since the afternoon of Wednesday 11th. I think five days has to be some sort of record! All installed fine. Let's hope things are better in future now that the Office updates have ended.

LOL! It will be interesting to see what happens next month with no more Office updates. The netbook's still scanning BTW........

Finally updated my main machine, using the normal IE8 interface. I started it scanning at 1230 yesterday, the yellow shield finally appeared at 1930, after 7 hours, and the scan completed and showed the updates on IE8 sometime during the night! All installed OK. My other machine, the netbook, is still scanning after 48 hours, the yellow shield appeared after about 36 hours of scanning. I'm being very patient.........

My two machines are taking an eternity to scan as before, but I'll just let them take their time and see how long they actually do take, I'm in no hurry! It will be interesting to see if in the future with no more updates for Office whether the scan times do reduce, as these seemed to be the main culprit. I seem to remember that the last time there were no Office updates for a month, it was a lot better.

All updated, thanks!