discussion B****y updates!

[Gern]

My Firefox automatically updated a couple of days ago, now all my videos look like this:

View attachment 290613

The sound is OK but all the images are double in this green/purple. I've tried to restore my system but that doesn't work either 'cos of some issue with a file on my C drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Have you updated your graphics card driver or was it a long time ago? That could cause this in case you're using a really old driver.
It's unlikely that it's Firefox that's causing this, it's more probable that another video related component/driver is at fault and this occurred now when Firefox made a change.

So first do a Windows update and when it's done update your graphics drivers and try again with youtube.
If the fault persists then we can take it from there!

Have you tried another browser? (like IE or Chrome) If so does it work there or do you have the same issue?

 

[Gern]

Thanks Jens. I've updated everything I can and installed Chrome as my search engine and all my videos seem to work now.

I have to say though that Chrome is the biggest load of c**p I've ever come across on a computer.

I've been playing around with the settings for the last two or three hours and I'm still having problems with the history and bookmarks. I'll keep trying, but this sort of stuff ought to be a matter of a few simple clicks - it shouldn't need a degree in IT to sort out!

 

[Guest]

The UI paradigm between Firefox and Chrome is quite different, but when you get used to Chrome it's actually more intuitive and easier - especially if you've got hundreds of saved bookmarks.
The area under the address bar is meant for bookmarks and if you create clever categories and place your bookmarks in the right ones it's easy to use - but as you say, quite different to get used to.

 

[PaulTRose]

I have to say though that Chrome is the biggest load of c**p I've ever come across on a computer.

youve not used Internet Explorer for a while then lol lol

i used to like firefox but its a bit slow these days

 

[Gern]

I'm using Chrome as my browser but reset Bing as my search engine. It's so simple and all the stuff I want is already set up.

I appreciate Chrome probably has many more features, but I'm a simple man with simple needs, so I'll stick with Bing.

Thanks again Jens for your help.

 

[Gern]

youve not used Internet Explorer for a while then lol lol

i used to like firefox but its a bit slow these days

I forgot about IE! Last time I used it was on my old PC which eventually stopped working altogether.

 

[Ian M]

The thing I like with chrome is that it can carry over to other hardware so I can find a link I was looking at on my phone, on my PC or iPad.
What puffed me off is just had a windows up date, and since then it (windows) seems to think it's fine to kick you out of the game you where using to tell you something 'important ' that you really don't give a rats rear about. So the last hour or two of the game gets lost, not chance of saving it. The bare stools.

 

[Guest]

The thing I like with chrome is that it can carry over to other hardware so I can find a link I was looking at on my phone, on my PC or iPad.
What puffed me off is just had a windows up date, and since then it (windows) seems to think it's fine to kick you out of the game you where using to tell you something 'important ' that you really don't give a rats rear about. So the last hour or two of the game gets lost, not chance of saving it. The bare stools.

This is the biggest thing I hate with Windows 10 and that's the automatic updates and reboots and it's impossible to turn off!
As a developer who's got plenty of temp files open this has forced me to rewrite large portions of code and snippets just because Windows decided to reboot when I was having a break.
It even reboots when the computer is in sleep mode and you get back and wonder why it's started when you remember putting it in sleep mode?

Turning off automatic updates doesn't work because that doesn't cover "critical" updates. They are still enforced...

I've gone so far as to hacking certain parts of the OS to stop the most annoying things but it's a useless heap of /&¤%&3 for professional use.
I've contemplated going back to Windows 8.1 just to get in control again, but then you don't get the critical patches so I'm stuck.
Even more annoying when you have payed for more than a few licenses of Windows 7 pro and 8 pro and then being forced an update to a non-pro "free" OS with a lot of unwanted features...

But back to the subject. Always make sure your drivers are up to date because OS updates relies on drivers being up to date and this can cause all sorts of problems.

 

[Gern]

The thing I like with chrome is that it can carry over to other hardware so I can find a link I was looking at on my phone, on my PC or iPad.
What puffed me off is just had a windows up date, and since then it (windows) seems to think it's fine to kick you out of the game you where using to tell you something 'important ' that you really don't give a rats rear about. So the last hour or two of the game gets lost, not chance of saving it. The bare stools.

I don't have any other hardware and I don't play games - except the odd game of Freecell or Hearts!

 

[Ian M]

Surprised that you use bing. That's got to be the most unhelpful search engine ever. I made a search with Bing, found nothing of use. Same search in Google brought more results than you can imagine.

Jens. The thing that really piffed me off with windows 10 is that I now have a steering wheel & peddle set, a couple of joysticks that a now junk as they are not supported any more in 10!

 

[Guest]

Surprised that you use bing. That's got to be the most unhelpful search engine ever. I made a search with Bing, found nothing of use. Same search in Google brought more results than you can imagine.

Jens. The thing that really piffed me off with windows 10 is that I now have a steering wheel & peddle set, a couple of joysticks that a now junk as they are not supported any more in 10!

My oldest son had the same issue so I had to write a new driver to make his steering wheel and pedals to work in Windows 10, but how many have the skills to reverse engineer a gaming device and just write a new driver for it?

There are some generic steering wheel drivers that works fine in Windows 10 that you can try. You just map everything the first time and then it works as any HID device onward!

 

[Gern]

Surprised that you use bing. That's got to be the most unhelpful search engine ever. I made a search with Bing, found nothing of use. Same search in Google brought more results than you can imagine.

Is Bing really that poor? I'm happy enough with it 'cos it's simple to use. Are there any other search engines - NOT Chrome! I'm not going to live long enough to learn all it's complexities - worth trying?

 

[Guest]

Is Bing really that poor? I'm happy enough with it 'cos it's simple to use. Are there any other search engines - NOT Chrome! I'm not going to live long enough to learn all it's complexities - worth trying?

Remember that BING was started by Microsoft in an attempt to cash in on some of the money Google is built upon, but they are years behind... They collect as much data they can on YOU on every search hoping to sell it to whoever's willing to pay for it. BING has perhaps 5% of the search data that Google has (maybe even less) so the results will be accordingly. BING is also way more heavily censored than Google search. Think political and commercial censorship.
Chrome is the browser, not the search engine btw

There have been plenty of search engines throughout the years. In the beginning Alta Vista was the biggest one but they are all but forgotten today and the only non-Google (and non-BING) search engines to even call search engines any longer are those who allow for shadier search results, like searching for dodgy stuff and pirate copies, or if you want to search the onions of Dark Web.
If you want to be 100% anonymous when searching (apart from the logs your ISP keeps) then use DuckDuckGo - but be ware because they don't censor any search results which might give you more than a couple of unexpected results!?! (like xss injected viruses etc)

I've been working with computer security for a couple of decades and I'm really picky about security and my integrity, to the extent that I'm running a modified version of Windows just to be in full control and the only search engine I use is Google Search simply because it's the most complete there is - and I know they remove dodgy stuff! When I need to search uncensored for work etc I've got other alternatives, but currently there is no search engine that even comes close to Google Search. BING is a school project in comparison.

Try it for a couple of weeks. If you're running Chrome and using Google Search then you quickly see the benefits of being a slave... erh... user of Googles services

(I've both worked for and with Google on many occasions so I know them from the inside, but they are generally a descent company - apart from making their money on your social life and preferences...)

 

[Gern]

OK Jens. I've set Google as my search engine and Google Chrome as my browser.

On the Bing opening page there was a toolbar at the top of the page that allowed me to choose whether to search specifically for images, videos etc. If I was browsing on ebay for example and wanted to search for a video build of a particular kit, I could do that just by clicking on Video and entering the subject into the search box. The results would only include videos and not articles or images.

Is there a way to do this on Google?

Can I get rid of the boxes under the search box on the opening page? If not, what are they for?

 

[Guest]

I don't know what boxes you mean on the opening page? Is it the apps you mean? You can customise the start page to show any page you want.

In Google search you search for any string and when the results come back you have a number of tabs in the top side of the results screen.
The first one is selected by default and that's the general, or "All" search. You can now click on Images and all images related to that search will come up.
You can even specify what size of images you search for, or a specific colour scheme. No limits here!
Other possible tabs are Maps, Videos, News and Others.
This is a really powerful search engine when you learn its features.

 

[Gern]

Aaahhh! So you sort for images, videos etc AFTER your search. That's just what I wanted thanks.

The boxes I referred to are the ones shown here:

View attachment 290642

They're the ones in the centre of the page. The first two are labelled Yell.com and lottery results so I assume these are Favourites. With the Bing favourites they were in a menu bar at the top of the page and I could create folders for particular types - eg Model stuff, music etc.

 

[Guest]

Those boxes are your most common pages you visit and they will change as you use the browser more.
Funny anecdote: this is how people get caught for visiting dodgy pages by their partner when they don't know that it might turn up as a frequently visited page

I've disabled that feature on my computers since I don't allow Google to store my search results. You can change that page if you want to.

 

[Gern]

Hi Jens.

I've looked into disabling or hiding those thumbnails. There are two main answers I've found.

One says there are no user options available to do it.

The other option is to download an extension from the Chrome webstore. I've tried that and apparently it too has been disabled!

Is there any particular reason that the morons at Google have decided to allow anyone to track my web use and I have no say in the matter?

Say what you like about Bing, the options you get are much more user friendly than those I've found so far on Google.

 

[Guest]

You can disable all tracking on your Google account but it's not exactly being advertised because that's how they make their money plus the police likes to be able to track people by just asking (read; demanding) that Google hand over such information.

Go to settings in Chrome and set "new page" as start page, or better - set to start on all pages that you had open when you turned off the computer the last time! That's a super handy setting!

To delete all old data (statistics) on your account just follow this link and choose delete all activities
https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?utm_source=help

You can also leave all ways Google store your activities. Per default Google even stores your physical position on all your Google/Android devices and that's really shady to have as default setting!
There's no danger today with them having your information but we don't know what might happen tomorrow?