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I lost my ability to click on a web link



 
 
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  #11  
Old November 4th 11, 01:09 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
who where[_2_]
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 92
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 06:53:08 -0600, wrote:

I just reinstalled the K-Meleon browser. I added an extension and it
totally screwed up the browser. I removed the extension but the
browser continued to act weird. Rather than fight with it, I just
uninstalled the browser, cleared out any remnants of it from the
registry, removed all profile stuff, and rebooted.
Then I reinstalled it. The browser itself works fine again, but if I
click on a weblink to a HTM or HTML file, nothing happens.

For example, if I formerly clicked on any web-link in a newsgroup
page, it would load.
Example:
www.google.com

If I would click on this url, it would open.

OR

If I clicked on a bookmark, the page would open.

Now, when I click on any of these, nothing happens.

(K-Meleon set as the default browser).

How do I fix this?

note - This is k-meleon version 1.5.4 (final version that runs on
win98).


Wow! Almost a deja-vu moment - the similarities to my FF2 post 19
October are downright spooky!
  #12  
Old November 4th 11, 01:10 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 249
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:23:26 -0500, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

wrote in :

I dont know what was removed from the registry because I used a
program called "System Mechanic" to clean the registry. When I tried
to run the "Restore" function of that program, it gave an error
message. Needless to say, that POS program has been removed.


There is a tiny tool called RegClean, I think it's one of Microsoft's own,
maybe part of some 'powertoys' or developer's kit. It's 837,632 bytes. If you
can, get it, it always backs up in timestamped files, in actual REG format so
putting them back is as easy as it gets, if it cleaned overmuch.

I have regclean and I do believe it is from MS.
My favorite is Reg Seeker. It shows you exactly what listings are
incorrect or unneeded, and you can delete or ignore each one.

After restoring the older registry, ran Reg seeker and there were
only 3 entries. All of these appear everytime I run it, and are
nothing but a reference to some missing folders that a certain piece
of software seems to believe I need. I remove em, they always come
back, but I dont much care, it's not a problem.

I restored the registry from Dos, put back a version from 5 days ago.
Everything works fine again......


Good for you. Just be aware that if you'd missed the boat, you'd have been
relying on a Ghost image or some other way. Ghost images are nice because
they're so complete, but unlike the registry backups, you need to get in the
habit of making them at times.

Windows defaults to 5 backups of the registry. I found in the ini
file for the restore program where it says "make 5 backups". I
changed the number to 8. Had I shut down windows a few more times, I
would have lost all of them.

You might also work up a batch script to save registries so you het more than
five shots. I never did that though, I lock mine down so it only changes if I
want ot to (I press ESC at the right moment to allow update). This trick
gives me as many shots as I want.

I could easily make a batch file that copies them to a spare folder
and call it from autoexec.bat. However, with 8 entries, I think I'm
ok.

I'm kind of wondering if I need to reinstall K-meleon again? Although
it works fine, I wonder if the pointers to it are screwed up in the
registry. Although I did place it in the same named folder. Only the
name of the "profiles" folder changed.


I think you need advice from someone who knows K-meleon specifcs, but in
general you can now try to clean the registry again, as you can restore your
working one any number of times. If you use that RegClean tool, look at the
saved file in a text editor, you might see things that help.

It's working just fine, so I dont see a need to reinstall it. I only
had to change a shortcut to the cache folder, that I created in case I
want to save something from cache or delete all the files in it.
Otherwise there are 6 or 7 levels to get there, so this just makes
that easy. The names of the profile folders on K-Meleon (and probably
all browsers), seems to change with each install. I guess they are
just randomly generated. I completely removed the whole program
including the profiles, I just did a backup of the bookmarks, which
only contained about 5 entries anyhow, since I rarely use bookmarks.

------

By the way, just out of curiousity, how does a person restore the
registry in Win2000, XP, Vista, Win7......
Those OSs dont use the actual or real Dos, so I wonder how they do the
restore?


I don't know details for those OS's but at some point in the boot process the
registry is prepared from file. I bet the situation isn't that much different
from W98, it's just not accessible if we only know DOS..


Probably so, I might ask this on the XP group just for the hell of
it....

Thanks for the help
(and thanks for NOT telling me to install Opera)


No problem. Although I do like it, once I found one that would work for me. I
tried many times too, for at least two years I turned away, annoyed because
it was a nonstarter. It was a portable install meant for USB memory that
convinced me. But I keep FireFox around in case I ever have to fall back.

I really like K-Meleon, it's a great browser. This is the first time
it got scrwewed up in all the years I used it. There is a newer
version that is only made for Win2000 and up. I bet this defective
extension was for that newer version. I also have Firefox, but FF is
so darn slow to load. I mostly just use FF as a backup browser and
for downloading Youtube videos with that extension called "Download
helper" (nice ext).

I tried opera back in the 90's when it first came out and hated it. I
tried it 3 or 4 more times over the years, with newer versions and
always hated it. One of those older versions even caused me to have
to reinstall Windows because it royally ****ed up my whole computer.
I will never use it again. Its garbage. I even emailed srom their
website once and told them exactly what I thought of their crap, and
it was not a friendly email. Of all the browsers made, I rate is as
the worst. IE has always been a POS, although I hear the new versions
are not too bad, but they wont run on 98. Firefox used to be great,
but it's getting far too bloated. I like K-Meleon the best.
Seamonkey will not install in Win98 (see my message yesterday about
that), Chrome is not made for 98, so I never tried it. And there's
OffByOne, which has it's value for untrusted sites, but with the
latest sites it generally dont do anything. There was one called
Slimbrowser that I used to use, it was just a front end for IE but
better than IE itself. That's about all I have used.

As to your other message, No, I dont use Ghost. I just copy my whole
harddrive to a backup drive. I've restored from it several times, but
I have not done a backup in months. Since the only problem was in the
registry, and works well now, all is good, but I guess I need to do a
recent backup.


I did that originally. ATTRIB to save original attributes of all sysfiles to
a text file, then unset all attributes. Then XCOPY, then a batch to reset
attributes according to the saved text. It works, but I wanted more....

I'll remember this. I know all those dos commands. I used to really
love working in dos and still do at times.

Why would I want to spend money on this Ghost software, when a simple
copy command works just fine? Software of this type generally just
makes money for the programmer, when all it really does is use the
commands already built into Windows. There seems to be quite a bit of
software like this.


When I got it, Ghose was cheap. v5.1. Later, with v2003, Norton released a
copy that was cheap and much newer. I based a whole Ghost Guide on this
pone... Symantec ARE a hungry firm, but Ghost originated with Binary Research


I dont much care for anything made by Norton. Norton Utilities back
in the dos days was great, but they sure went downhill.

What is a "PONE" ?

in New Zealand. (Who still make something similar called Sprite Backup for
PDA's running WIndows Mobile). That firm is brilliant, in the Einstein sense
of the word. Norton and Symantec have REALLY tried to make Ghost their own,
but it's rock solid, there wasn't much they could do to it that didn't break
it or bloat it, so they largely learned to leave well alone. It's worth
it, it really is.

It does things Windows can't do. It's a bit like Partition Magic in its
ability to specialise in low level disk accesses and guarantee data security


I have a good working copy of Partition Magic 8, and I like it a lot.
But it dont have the backup abilities.

because of that. First thing I noticed when I tried the original v4 was the
speed! XCOPY works, but a run that took 35 minutes took 5 or so with Ghost.
No matter what I did to speed the DOS command copies, it never looked
attractive compared to Ghost. Maybe sometime you'll want a forensic standard
copy of every byte on a disk to recover data from, or need some other Ghost-
like speciality. It's GDISK replacement for FDISK is alone worth the price of
admission, the only disk setup tool I ever saw better than GDISK is built
into OpenBSD, and I don't think anything beats that one so it's a tough act
to follow.

Main problem with Ghost as a commercial thing, is sheer wanton BLOAT. More
than a CD full these days I think. In practise, four small files, totalling
less than 5 MB, is all we need. If you ever want to try, see if you can
locate thre following, all from same install set:


Does the latest version of Ghost (bloat) even work on win98??????

GHOST.EXE
GhostExp.exe (the Ghost Explorer, Windows tool...)
GDISK.EXE
Ghost Boot Wizard.exe (Not really vital, unless you want bootable CD's with
images. It makes ISO's you can burn to CD with other tools, I think).
If you have time, try at least the first three. They will make you rethink
Ghost, probably. It ought to be cheap to get an old copy somewhere, it's not
one of those things we need to chase upgrades for. Just don't go for anything
too old, v2003 should be fine.


  #13  
Old November 4th 11, 03:04 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 249
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

On Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:09:52 +0800, who where wrote:


Wow! Almost a deja-vu moment - the similarities to my FF2 post 19
October are downright spooky!


I found part of that thread. I assume you were "Bill" in that one? I
know I sometimes use a different copy of my newsreader and forget to
change the nym.

Anyhow, I did not read the whole thread, but did you fix it? How?

I'm back to normal here. In fact K-Meleon is faster than it used to
be, but that is probably because I dont have any extensions installed
now. I rarely used them anyhow, except the flash blocker.

I wont be using any of those programs that supposely clean the
registry anymore, except "RegSeeker". On that one I get to choose
what is removed. Most of the time the entries that need to be removed
are just files and folders that no longer exist. I remove those
without a second thought. And there are entries from programs I
deleted. I also remove those right away, but there are some things
that I'm not sure about. I leave those, unless I later determine they
are useless. I never understood why none executible files and folders
(such as text files) get put in the registry anyhow, but they do....

Anyhow. I'd be curious to read what you did about this.


  #14  
Old November 4th 11, 05:56 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
thanatoid
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 2,299
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

wrote in
:

I dont know what was removed from the registry because I
used a program called "System Mechanic" to clean the
registry. When I tried to run the "Restore" function of
that program, it gave an error message. Needless to say,
that POS program has been removed.


jw, I KF'd you because you are a moron. You have just again
proved that you are one, because you used System Mechanic.

There is a tiny tool called RegClean, I think it's one of
Microsoft's own, maybe part of some 'powertoys' or
developer's kit. It's 837,632 bytes. If you can, get it, it
always backs up in timestamped files, in actual REG format
so putting them back is as easy as it gets, if it cleaned
overmuch.

I restored the registry from Dos, put back a version from
5 days ago. Everything works fine again......


Let's see how long that lasts...

Good for you. Just be aware that if you'd missed the boat,
you'd have been relying on a Ghost image or some other way.
Ghost images are nice because they're so complete, but
unlike the registry backups, you need to get in the habit
of making them at times.

You might also work up a batch script to save registries so
you het more than five shots. I never did that though, I
lock mine down so it only changes if I want ot to (I press
ESC at the right moment to allow update). This trick gives
me as many shots as I want.


jw can't write a batch script.

I'm kind of wondering if I need to reinstall K-meleon
again? Although it works fine, I wonder if the pointers
to it are screwed up in the registry. Although I did
place it in the same named folder. Only the name of the
"profiles" folder changed.


Dog forbid you install a real browser like Opera.

I think you need advice from someone who knows K-meleon
specifcs, but in general you can now try to clean the
registry again, as you can restore your working one any
number of times. If you use that RegClean tool, look at the
saved file in a text editor, you might see things that
help.

------

By the way, just out of curiousity, how does a person
restore the registry in Win2000, XP, Vista, Win7......
Those OSs dont use the actual or real Dos, so I wonder how
they do the restore?


I am REALLY loving this... Did you save examples of your EXTREME
stupidity for after I KF'd you?

I don't know details for those OS's but at some point in
the boot process the registry is prepared from file. I bet
the situation isn't that much different from W98, it's just
not accessible if we only know DOS..

Thanks for the help
(and thanks for NOT telling me to install Opera)


I'm here to do that.

snip

Why would I want to spend money on this Ghost software,
when a simple copy command works just fine? Software of
this type generally just makes money for the programmer,
when all it really does is use the commands already built
into Windows. There seems to be quite a bit of software
like this.


There are about 5 free imagers that do what Ghost and Acronis,
the best-known ones, do. But they DO require some brains to
use...

snip



--
There's nothing here to attract existing fans of either bands.
Instead, all [Rhino's compilation] "Total" does is to reinforce
the idea that Joy Division/New Order was a hugely exciting
source of music between 1978 and 1990 and New Order has been a
pitiful shadow of their once-visionary selves ever since.
John Meagher, The Irish Independent
  #16  
Old November 4th 11, 11:35 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 249
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

On Fri, 4 Nov 2011 04:56:00 +0000 (UTC), thanatoid
wrote:

jw, I KF'd you because you are a moron. You have just again
proved that you are one, because you used System Mechanic.


PLONK

  #17  
Old November 4th 11, 12:05 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
who where[_2_]
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 92
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

On Fri, 4 Nov 2011 04:58:55 +0000 (UTC), thanatoid
wrote:

who where wrote in
:


Wow! Almost a deja-vu moment - the similarities to my FF2
post 19 October are downright spooky!


You must be /really/ proud to have things in common with jw.


I wa just commenting on the similarity,

Dunno what you're on, but surely supply without a prescription is
illegal.
  #19  
Old November 4th 11, 12:23 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
Lostgallifreyan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,562
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

thanatoid wrote in
:

There are about 5 free imagers that do what Ghost and Acronis,
the best-known ones, do. But they DO require some brains to
use...


Could be good, but I'd choose according to some standards set by Ghost... I
stayed with Ghost because it really was the only game in town when I wanted
it. This is why Symantec and Norton bought it up. People shouldn't associate
it with those firms, they didn't make it. I doubt they'd ever been capable.
They couldn't even edit it much without weakening it.

This is one of those tools that really DO need to be easy to do even if our
brains aren't all that.. No matter how smart we are, stress makes if **** up
at times. We're usually reaching for a tool like this in an emergency, or to
lay down good prevention. Either way, a tool as bold and solid as a fire
curtain in a theatre is entirely in order. This is not a good situation to be
fumbling with esoteric Linux-style commandlines, for instance.

Important Ghostly remark: Ghost used to be sold on ONE 1.44 MB FLOPPY. And it
hasn't got much bigger in over a decade since, no matter WHAT Norton or
Symantec want people to think. The fact that those big firms could milk it so
mightily basically proves how good that core is. Behind all that smoke is a
hell of a fire. Maybe if the OpenBSD people made some standalone tool we
might have something as freeware to match it, but I think the best shot is to
find the cheapest copy of a recent Ghost available. To be fair to Norton,
they DID make an effort to reduce cost and get it out to a lot more people
with v2003, but I think there were also magazines letting people have at it
for free.
  #20  
Old November 4th 11, 09:29 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 249
Default I lost my ability to click on a web link

On Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:11:49 +0800, who where wrote:

Anyhow, I did not read the whole thread, but did you fix it? How?

(snip)

Anyhow. I'd be curious to read what you did about this.


"J. P. Gilliver (John)" offered good advice on how to resurrect
things. Rather than risk stuffing it up by requoting, I would refer
you to that thread.

Things are now *almost* back to normal, although there are a couple of
weirdnesses that have arisen since the repair. I haven't followed up
in that thread as I'm trying to get a handle on exactly what is
happening that is not as per. As an example, if I am looking at the
results of a google search and middle-click on a link, the results
page in view returns to the top. Little things like that.


My system is now back to normal. I rarely install new software, most
of the time if I want to test some download I try it on a old computer
thats only used for testing. So I went back as many days in the
registry restore as was avialable which was 5 days. I'm still not
100% sure if the initial problem was that extension, or it could have
been something got corrupted???? I think browsers are more likely to
get corrupted because of the constant cache writing and removal. Then
too, some sort of spyware may have gotten picked up too, although
spybot did not find any. Of course no spyware software is 100%
useful. My whole system was running slow, even with the browser not
in use, so spyware could have been the issue.... who knows....

Either way, I'm almost positive that the trouble after the reinstall
was something that System Mechanic screwed up in the registry.
(I wont run that thing again). I'm back to normal and all is running
well. My only problem is that I cant remember how to get K-Meleon to
delete the cache when I close it. Eventually I'll find that setting,
till then, I made a batch file to clear it. K-meleon is an excellent
browser, but there is no newsgroup for it, to ask for advice. They do
have a forum website, but using those for any software is like trying
to find a needle in a haystack.

 




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