Dave-H

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!

Do you have Microsoft Office with the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack installed on that machine? If so, that is the reason that the update scanning is taking so long. If you manually install any Office updates first, the scan should then work quickly. Any Office updates should be recorded in this thread, with links to them.

Unfortunately I haven't any other suggestions. It works fine for me with Firefox 52.3.0 ESR. If it doesn't work for you, even after exhaustively following all the procedures, it's a bit of a mystery.

The disadvantage of that workaround, IIRC, is that the VP8/vorbis versions of YouTube videos sometimes don't appear straight away, so some new videos you may have to wait awhile until you can play them using that configuration.

I wasn't aware that there was any problem with KB4039384, if anyone mentioned a possible one it wasn't me. If there is an earlier version of xpsp2res.dll in KB4039111 it doesn't seem to have overwritten the newer version when it was installed, which is good (presumably).

Just a quick clarification. My xpsp2res.dll file is version 5.1.2600.7248 (despite having installed KB4039111). My USP10.dll is version 1.420.2600.7334, and GDIPLUS.dll is version 5.2.6002.24180. I'm using Office XP(2002) with the 2007 Compatibility Pack. Does that sound right, or do I need any more updating?

The six offered updates installed fine for me. It took ages to scan again due to the presence of the Office updates. Are these likely to be the last ones, or will there be some more next month I wonder? I read somewhere (here probably!) that support for the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack ends next month, which would make sense as it's presumably 10 years after it was launched. I've also installed the optional update KB4039111. Anyone know what this actually is? Its page on the MS site, which is linked to from many other sites, is just "page not found"!

OK, I've now just deleted the PinRules which had expired. I had to delete the websites that were using them (which was all of those listed) before EMET would let me do that. I did read somewhere that these "protected sites" (Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook etc.) are only actually protected by EMET when using Internet Explorer. Is that right? If that's the case there's no point in having them set up anyway, as I never use IE now for websites, only for Microsoft Update, as the sites don't usually work properly now in IE8 anyway!

I'm getting security alerts popping up when I read some e-mails on Eudora 7.1. They say "the name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site". If I dismiss them everything carries on fine. Viewing the certificate and installing it seems to make no difference. The one I'm looking at at the moment is issued to *.stackpathdns.com and I'm wondering if the wildcard asterisk is the problem.

So is EMET effectively now completely obsolete? I downloaded the latest version (5.52) and the installer contains the same PinRules that just expired. If you have the latest version installed (not on XP obviously) does it update the PinRules automatically still to a later version?

Thanks Thomas, that's good news! My configuration is exactly the same as yours, so it should work for me too. The next time I find a non-functional animated GIF in my Facebook newsfeed, I'll check that plugin icon! Cheers, Dave.

I'm now getting error messages in my logs that four EMET PinRules expired on the September 1st. Anyone any idea how I can update them? I'm using EMET 4.1.

That agrees with my findings, if you click on the source link icon on the GIF it does then open and play fine in a new tab, just not embedded in the Facebook page. Has to be another XP limitation I think, but probably not worth worrying about. The important thing is that the videos work!

Thanks Thomas, that's a good shout, but unfortunately Flash is enabled on Facebook for me, and always has been, but the GIFs still don't work. I'm wondering now whether they ever did actually work on Windows XP. I still think that H.265 is probably the key, it's probably supported natively in Windows 10 but not in XP.