Ads Not Loading In Browsers

[Keith Russell]

Hi, everyone.

I know this will be a strange request, because many users prefer
NOT to see ads while they're browsing....

I do prefer to have pop-ups blocked, but at the same time, I have
no problem with "quiet" ads placed on the Web page, and actually
find them useful if they're related to the content I'm browsing.
However, a few weeks ago, for some unknown reason, many of these
ads stopped loading.

For example, if I go to http://www.pcmag.com, there should be an
ad between the magazine's logo and the search bar toward the top
of the screen. Instead, I get "The page cannot be displayed.
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable." I have
the same message displayed for three ads on the right-hand side
of the page. It's really ugly.

I thought this might be a problem with IE, or some setting that
got changed accidentally, but Firefox behaves similarly. The only
difference is that with Firefox, it says "Unable to connect" in
each of the four panels

Interestingly, with Opera I get nothing but white space (which
isn't good, but it certainly looks better!).

All three browsers are the latest versions. I'm running XP Pro
with all patches applied. I've terminated all processes I can
possibly terminate, just in case some other application I'm
running is causing this behavior, but there is no change.

Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Galen]

In Keith Russell had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hi, everyone.

I know this will be a strange request, because many users prefer
NOT to see ads while they're browsing....

I do prefer to have pop-ups blocked, but at the same time, I have
no problem with "quiet" ads placed on the Web page, and actually
find them useful if they're related to the content I'm browsing.
However, a few weeks ago, for some unknown reason, many of these
ads stopped loading.

For example, if I go to http://www.pcmag.com, there should be an
ad between the magazine's logo and the search bar toward the top
of the screen. Instead, I get "The page cannot be displayed.
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable." I have
the same message displayed for three ads on the right-hand side
of the page. It's really ugly.

I thought this might be a problem with IE, or some setting that
got changed accidentally, but Firefox behaves similarly. The only
difference is that with Firefox, it says "Unable to connect" in
each of the four panels

Interestingly, with Opera I get nothing but white space (which
isn't good, but it certainly looks better!).

All three browsers are the latest versions. I'm running XP Pro
with all patches applied. I've terminated all processes I can
possibly terminate, just in case some other application I'm
running is causing this behavior, but there is no change.

Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Antispyware application altering the hosts file to "protect" you?

Change:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

To:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc.bak

Might need to reboot.

Does that fix it?

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[Keith Russell]

Antispyware application altering the hosts file to "protect" you?

Change:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

To:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc.bak

Might need to reboot.

Does that fix it?

Wow! Brilliant, Galen! Thanks for the super-fast solution. Wish I
hadn't waited so long to ask.

It even fixed the problem with images not displaying on my MyWay
home page.

Thanks again.

 

[Galen]

In Keith Russell had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Wow! Brilliant, Galen! Thanks for the super-fast solution. Wish I
hadn't waited so long to ask.

It even fixed the problem with images not displaying on my MyWay
home page.

Thanks again.

I'm not done...

The only line it *should* contain (other than the drivel at the top that
won't mean a lot unless you understand networking and in that case you'd
already know it and would have checked there first probably) is "127.0.0.1
localhost" (without the quotes).

Open it with Notepad (not any other text editor, just to be certain it
doesn't add additional characters and really hose stuff) and change it back
and then find out what "anti-something" application changed your system
settings without your permission and set fire to the author. Or, well, just
send them a nastygram via email which is my normal method. Of course, double
check to make sure you didn't select that option (albeit not always is it
clearly written what they do when they offer stuff termed something akin to
"browser protection") first so that you're not blaming them for something
you did.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[Keith Russell]

I'm not done...

The only line it *should* contain (other than the drivel at the top that
won't mean a lot unless you understand networking and in that case you'd
already know it and would have checked there first probably) is "127.0.0.1
localhost" (without the quotes).

Probably. Actually, I do understand networking fairly well,
but for some reason, I was focused on ad-blocking applications
and didn't think to look elsewhere....

Open it with Notepad (not any other text editor, just to be certain it
doesn't add additional characters and really hose stuff) and change it back
and then find out what "anti-something" application changed your system
settings without your permission and set fire to the author. Or, well, just
send them a nastygram via email which is my normal method. Of course, double
check to make sure you didn't select that option (albeit not always is it
clearly written what they do when they offer stuff termed something akin to
"browser protection") first so that you're not blaming them for something
you did.

Ahem...this is somewhat embarrassing. I had actually, several
months ago, downloaded and installed the Hosts file at
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm (developed by Microsoft
MVP's and, according to the Web page, recommended by Kim Komando
and Pricelessware). I got involved with other things and didn't
notice any problems right away, and then completely forgot about
it--until you mentioned the Hosts file and I knew immediately
what had happened.

So...you're saying that the Hosts file should only contain a
single line and not the type of site-blocking entries in this
file? What about the machines on my LAN? Is it not a good idea to
include them?

Thanks again for getting me to look in the right place to solve
this aggravating problem!

 

[Galen]

In Keith Russell had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Probably. Actually, I do understand networking fairly well,
but for some reason, I was focused on ad-blocking applications
and didn't think to look elsewhere....


Ahem...this is somewhat embarrassing. I had actually, several
months ago, downloaded and installed the Hosts file at
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm (developed by Microsoft
MVP's and, according to the Web page, recommended by Kim Komando
and Pricelessware). I got involved with other things and didn't
notice any problems right away, and then completely forgot about
it--until you mentioned the Hosts file and I knew immediately
what had happened.

So...you're saying that the Hosts file should only contain a
single line and not the type of site-blocking entries in this
file? What about the machines on my LAN? Is it not a good idea to
include them?

Thanks again for getting me to look in the right place to solve
this aggravating problem!

I'm saying that the hosts file is a wonderful thing and a great way to block
sites. I'm just not saying it very clearly I suppose. What I am really
trying to say is something that I learned from the author of Hostess (Ray)
back when I was beta testing his change to the Delphi programming language
for him. When asked, by me actually, why not just make a giant list of the
blocked hosts for all the evil sites and for all the ad sites and distribute
it right there on the site? He responded with a good statement that I didn't
fully understand until quite some time later but it boiled down to how the
hosts file is actually a very personal thing and that there are sites that I
might want to see or that you might want to see and that a file maintained
by someone else by no means truly a good representation of what you want to
see or what you don't want to see and, from having already inserted someone
else's blocked lists, you may not get to see that and won't be able to know
if you want to see it or not. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't that long winded
but that's what I got out of it and it stands true to this day.)

I didn't realize that you were network aware. I think, and I'm just as
guilty of it as you or anyone else, we tend to look to one area and
concentrate there and often overlook the TS steps we've painstakingly
learned all these years. I am, for instance, forever kicking my firewall
simply because that's usually the problem and yet often it's just my
connection's gone silly after a few days of being up. (Dialup isn't that
nice after a few days with my ISP but other than that they're great, cheap,
and have NNTP free...)

So, instead, I'll offer you this to chew on:

Ray Marron - Hostess:
http://www.raymarron.com/hostess/

It's just run from itself and if you dump it into C:\Program Files\Hostess\
then you can drag a shortcut to the quick launch or where you'd like and
easily get at it that way. It even allows you to enable/disable the hosts
file pretty simply.

I recently did a beta for a killer piece of software but, well, now it's
payware so I don't generally recommend payware actually unless it's very
good.

I'm not sure that the price is justified in my humble opinion but the
software is really rather nice:

http://www.adsfilter.com/en/

I still have the last beta - it bugs me once every couple of weeks or so to
update (it does a version check and a packet sniffer shows that's all that
it does) - and it's pretty good for blocking ads on a more selective basis
as well as allowing wildcard blocking and subdomain blocking. The amazing
thing is that it's a BHO and it works with proxies. I use compression
software to enable me to load text and (albeit 8 bit) graphics more
rapidly - DSL is not an option and the FUP for satellite's akin to insanity
though I'm considering it - and it works like a champ.

So if you wanted to block some ads that might be an option you could pursue
though it's not a free application.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"I am glad of all details, whether they seem to you to be relevant or
not." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[Keith Russell]

Hi, Galen.

Thanks for the reply. My responses in-line below....

In Keith Russell had this to say:

I'm saying that the hosts file is a wonderful thing and a great way to block
sites. I'm just not saying it very clearly I suppose. What I am really
trying to say is something that I learned from the author of Hostess (Ray)
back when I was beta testing his change to the Delphi programming language
for him. When asked, by me actually, why not just make a giant list of the
blocked hosts for all the evil sites and for all the ad sites and distribute
it right there on the site? He responded with a good statement that I didn't
fully understand until quite some time later but it boiled down to how the
hosts file is actually a very personal thing and that there are sites that I
might want to see or that you might want to see and that a file maintained
by someone else by no means truly a good representation of what you want to
see or what you don't want to see and, from having already inserted someone
else's blocked lists, you may not get to see that and won't be able to know
if you want to see it or not.

Very well said, and I just proved it. ;-) That was exactly the
problem I caused for myself.

My original intention, after downloading and installing the new
hosts file, was to go through it and clean it up and personalize
it to my needs. It was so huge, though, it was a daunting task,
and before I got around to it, I'd forgotten it was there!

I didn't realize that you were network aware.

No problem. I certainly didn't say anything to indicate that I
was!

I think, and I'm just as
guilty of it as you or anyone else, we tend to look to one area and
concentrate there and often overlook the TS steps we've painstakingly
learned all these years. I am, for instance, forever kicking my firewall
simply because that's usually the problem and yet often it's just my
connection's gone silly after a few days of being up. (Dialup isn't that
nice after a few days with my ISP but other than that they're great, cheap,
and have NNTP free...)

Thanks for making me fell better.

So, instead, I'll offer you this to chew on:

Ray Marron - Hostess:
http://www.raymarron.com/hostess/

It's just run from itself and if you dump it into C:\Program Files\Hostess\
then you can drag a shortcut to the quick launch or where you'd like and
easily get at it that way. It even allows you to enable/disable the hosts
file pretty simply.

Looks very nice. I've downloaded it and will install it when I
get a chance to spend some time with it.

I recently did a beta for a killer piece of software but, well, now it's
payware so I don't generally recommend payware actually unless it's very
good.

I'm not sure that the price is justified in my humble opinion but the
software is really rather nice:

http://www.adsfilter.com/en/

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out later and see if it would
be helpful.

I do some Ad Muncher for ad blocking, and have been quite happy
with it. My purpose in modifying the hosts file was more to block
malicious or "bad" sites than just ads.

Thanks again for all the help and education!