need help with edge-gamers.com

[Bones]

Granted a week of DS lite to you Bones while we figure this out. Thanks for the report!

I just got back today and am trying the forum while my DS lite is active. I am NOT experiencing any problems at this time. I will continue to try the forums today. After a day or two, I suggest we turn off my DS lite and see if the problem comes back.

If they say it's not the adds / popups, but yet the DS lite prevents the problem, then I am a bit confused on why there is a variance between having DS lite and not having it. They did mention "they are usually spawned by a local malware infection that is detecting ad tags being loaded, and then loads the popup alongwith. "

I am willing to explore other browsers (depending on work issues) but I feel we should exhaust our efforts in finding a solution to the problem first. I am willing to try a pattern write to the drive one time to wipe all data on the drive before reinstalling windows 7 again if this will help isolate the problem further. That would be a "last resort".

For now, I am willing to consider other things such as updating my wife's internet explorer from version 9 to version 10 to see if that creates the problem, reinstall my system to version 8 or 9, etc. Much of this effort I can do in the background while using another computer so the hit on my time is minimal. There is a limit to even this though Let me know if you want me to try something else.

Note about my Windows re-install:
I found the report about the rogue malware interesting. I have run malwarebytes and found nothing yet (not suggesting that is a cure-all). Though some don't like it, I have Norton Internet Security (required for work) as well. When I installed Windows 7 -64bit, I did a full format of my SSD drive (not recommended for SSD?). I had also wiped all partitions and repartitioned it during the process. I even wiped the backup partition that was created by Dell.

***** Added 4.5.2013 3:37pm Eastern *****
I made a financial contribution today, but I prefer we continue to turn on and off my adds as needed to troubleshoot the problem.

 

[Bones]

**** Because of page break I am stating this was my second post today... please see previous one too****

I ran another test WITHOUT logging into my account. Accessed several forum pages that failed before and also left it on the main forum page for 20 minutes without any failures.

Unless I have something new, I won't update this thread until after my DS lite expires on 4/7/2013. I will keep trying to get it to fail as I have time to test it.

 

[Artimus]

The Ad Network, although researching what can be done about this problem, mentions that the overwhelming majority of our members are experiencing no issues. He states:

I feel his pain. But, if it was a true adserver/malware plague, we?d be having site wide (and group wide), hourly/daily mentions of this from users all over.

No idea why the internet gods are picking on this guy specifically, but it appears that way. Certainly, we can?t shut off all ads for all users if just one, or even a few, are having isolated issues. But, it?s not nice to let a user feel they are being swept under the rug or that their issues don?t matter to the upper management (you and me).

If he can get some code/error logs?.something?that would help.

Ric, Bones and Silent_Predator have posted in this thread. Are you guys all still experiencing problems?

 

[Silent_Predator]

I have had no problems since I donated. However, I do remember the crash being associated with a win 7 popup stating that there are/were certificate errors with the ads and that win 7 was blocking the ads with these errors.

 

[Bones]

I just had a problem while trying to log in from our main page.
After finally being able to login, the problem went away though I currently have DS lite active until 4/7.

After my DS lite expires, I will try updating my wife's system from explorer 9 to 10. I will make an image of her system before I do that so that I can return her to 9 and try again. This seems to be the least effort required of me. I will let you know what happens.

I have had no problems since I donated. However, I do remember the crash being associated with a win 7 popup stating that there are/were certificate errors with the ads and that win 7 was blocking the ads with these errors.

I will try exploring that issue further. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Bones]

Hmmm,

Before logging in this time, I received the popup saying that Internet Explorer has stopped working with the button to "Close program"

I am currently ignoring it and able to work through our website with any visible problems (other than the small popup window message staying on top of everything) - Before logging in.

 

[Artimus]

Keep the updates coming.

 

[Bones]

On Saturday evening (4/6) while still having DS lite, I uinstalled the Explorer 10 update on one of my computers which reverted it back to Explorer 9. From here I have two seperate shortcuts to run it. One is for 32-bit which includes my Norton toolbar. The other is 64 bit which Norton does NOT have a toolbar for. I am currently trying the 32-bit version.

Today at 5:36 AM I logged into our website and I noticed the ads. It failed within a few seconds. At the moment it is staying up long enough for me to type this, but I do notice after the recovery that my curser position is not blinking to show me the updated position. It started acting very sluggish so I moved back over to Note Pad to write this. Before copying this, the Explorer screen seemed locked or frozen. I hit the refresh (F5) and the screen went blank for almost a minute before returning. I was no longer logged into our web site when it returned. I logged back in and it has not failed for over 50 minutes so far. I notice that the Advertisements are NOT changing. They are stuck on specific BEST BUY displays at the moment. I hit the refresh again and the Best Buy ads cycle through different products, but then stop again. I just noticed that at the very top that there is a Verizon Ad that was cycling too and then also stopped. Still no failure. I will try the 64-bit version tonight and let you know what happens.

I noticed that I had script debugging turned off. I just turned it on along with "Display a notificaiton about every script error". There are other features under Tools/Advanced that I could change. Let me know if there is some other setting to try.

It is at this point that I copied / pasted this text into the thread. Off to work for now.

 

[Silent_Predator]

I had to sign in today and got the "Internet Explorer has stopped working" dialogue box, aswell as security certificate errors for the ads, and a dialogue box about the websites content, not all of it being secure.

 

[Bones]

Explorer version 64-bit crashing similar to 32-bit. After crashing several times, I noticed curser not flashing right now, nor am I getting continous updates of the ads. I also don't seem to be crashing right now.

I sent another word document with screen captures in it to egodemo. This time you can see some of the script debugging information. The system would crash within a second or 2 of these debug messages.

Let me know ifyou want me to try something else. Still digging for more information for you on this end.

 

[Artimus]

All info forwarded to the ad network.

 

[Bones]

I just captured more screen shots and sent them to egodemo. I said yes to the debugging prompt which opened up the page programming. One thing I do notice repeatedly, is that after it fails, I lose updated cursor information where I am typing and some of the ads freeze or lock.

 

[Bones]

The software including JAVA on my system was and is fully updated

I am putting down here my observations and thoughts, though these may be obvious to you. They may be repeating information from before.

The failures happen when I first go to one of our pages (main and child windows). If I survive afer recovering from that, it rarely fails again while I stay on that page.

One time I received a message that Internet Explorer blocked a popup from something like airforce5 (Wish I would have captured that better). That was the first notification I have had about ANY blocks throughout this.

Something that seems new. When I go to any of our WEB pages, the ads play through their animations once and stop. The ads are not changing to new ads anymore while staying on the same page. This may have been the case previously, as the web page reloads when I recover from a failure and brings up new ads. If I move my mouse over the ads, some of them change slightly highlighting a part of it, some play through their animation again, some don't seem to do anything. ZWINKY is the only ad that seem to repeat a loop animation of several circles changing sizes behind the female character, but the ad does not change to another add.

There is one ad that would change the colors slightly as you hover the mouse over it. It has what looks like are 2 buttons: PLAY NOW (green) DOWNLOAD (red). sometimes after refreshing our page, the colors don't change and the ads seeems frozen. So in some cases, the ads actions don't seem to recognize that the mouse is over them.

I am suspicious that the failures are related to when the ads are loading which happens when going to a new page on our website. For instance if I am OK on Main page (failure or not), and I go to the Forums page, The ads refresh to something new and the fialure can happen. The animations still play through their cycle, and as I said before, once they detect the mouse is hovering over them, some of them will play animation or change in some way.

I had one failure where the ad did not seem to completely load and the ad window was blank, I captured it and am sending it to egodemo as "edge-gamers website problem 3" just becuase it was something I had not captured before.

 

[Artimus]

Forwarded.

 

[Bones]

A Clue.

A Clue

I observed this relationship of the failures for about 1.5 hours. I did not bother logging in. I just opened our site and immediately paged down to the bottom of the screen. Later I changed the zoom of the screen to 39% to see the whole page on the screen. Sometimes I would just let it fix itself and watch it again (which would usually lead to another failure). Other times I would close the old window and launch a new one. No difference between either of those scenarios.

At the bottom of the page, there is a dual window advertisement. There are at least two different types that go into those two windows. The types don’t seem to change once the page is loaded, though I may not give it enough time. Anyways, they are:

1) The advertisement has controls in it (e.g. volume, pause, etc.).
2) The advertisement does not have the controls (though it may play a video, animation, static, etc.).

It ALWAYS failed when either or both advertisements were type 1. It has NOT failed (so far) when both advertisements were type 2.

The trick to maneuver through the page is to do it fast enough so as to get to our deeper child windows so that the dual advertisement window does not have time to launch the troublesome video app and then hope the final resting page does not contain the type 1 advertisements. The chances of doing it slowly and always getting the type 2 along the way are low.

As I sit on the page right now, I notice both advertisements in the dual window are type 2 and it is NOT failing which is consistent. I also notice that there is a link underneath it (Powered by vBadvanced CMPS v3.2.0). I plan to search the internet for similar failures with vBadvanced to see if there is a quick fix (Flash version, etc.) or other download that I can try. Give me a day or two to do this.

As always, if there is ANYTHING you can do or suggest on your end, please let me know.

I will send one more word document with a picture of each type just to be sure I am explaining the different types.

 

[kYuKi]

Another reason to disable Internet Explorer and Bing toolbar ASAP.

 

[Bones]

Please see http://www.edge-gamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2368577&postcount=34 for reference information.

When I previously said my Wife’s computer was NOT having the problem, I was wrong – it does. I tried it today and it failed. I think that when I tested it before, the dual advertisement window probably had both ads as Type 2. Since she also has Chrome on it, I decided to try it using her machine which will fail with Internet Explorer. Chrome worked fine, no failures.

The more I test it on my computer with Internet Explorer, the more I am convinced the problem is associated with the dual advertisement window. It may only be a function of the type of advertisement used there and not the dual advertisement concept itself. The Hypothesis continues to hold through my present testing. I am still searching for information on problems with vBadvanced and the use of video apps. There are a few posts on the internet talking about problems with videos. I am trying to find one that pertains to a similar situation like ours.

All three of my computers at home have “Home Premium“ Windows 7 – 64 Bit. My wife’s computer and my tower computer versions of Windows 7 both directly came from Microsoft which was installed by me. My laptop’s version of Windows 7 came from Dell. My laptop at work is a Dell and does NOT have the problem. It uses “Professional” Windows 7 – 32 Bit.

I will keep you posted.

 

[Bones]

I am seeing things changing as I am trying to capture other aspects of the problem. It would seem that either you are changing things, or the advertising companies are changing things. I will hold off for now from trying to build an information data base from what I am currently seeing.

 

[Bones]

Things are working for now, and worth noting, I have not seen the type of video advertisement with the controls that were depicted in the screen shots I sent to egodemo. Thank you for all your help so far. Are we done, or are we still in the test/debug phase?

 

[Artimus]

I've been forwarding your messages, but I don't know if action was taken based specifically on your situation. I'm glad that things are better now. Fingers crossed.....