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One of my favorite Firefox add-ons is FireFTP. I use it all the time because it’s very convenient to FTP from my browser rather than firing up a separate application. That and FireFTP just works really well for me.

I went to transfer some files last evening and as soon as the transfer started, Firefox crashed. This isn’t something that happens on a regular basis, but I figured it was a glitch and restarted Firefox. Started FireFTP, connected to the web site, initiated the transfer and…another shower of sparks and the dreaded “Firefox has crashed” dialog.

Everything had worked fine last week, so I started taking inventory of what had changed since then. After a bit of thought, I realized I had installed an application called Surfboard Technologies Tracking Application on my system as part of a survey I was taking.

Step 1: get rid of the Tracking Application! I like my system setup the way it is and won’t go back to using a separate FTP application in order to accomodate badly behaved software. So, I brought up Control Panel, clicked on Programs and Features (yes, this system runs Vista ) and looked for “Surfboard”. I found the entry, clicked on it and clicked Uninstall.

Some 30 minutes later, the dialog was still there saying “Please wait while Windows configures Surfboard…blah, blah, blah”. The hard drive activity light was showing a lot of activity, so I started to wonder what the uninstall process was actually doing. I clicked the Cancel button. The dialog sat there pretty much as before.

I decided to find the process and kill it, so I ran SysInternals’ very handy Process Explorer and searched for “Surfboard” among the running processes. I found a number of entries which told me that the actual executable name is PanelApp.exe. I also got the process ID so with that I went back to Task Manager and found the ID matched up with msiexec.exe. I killed the process and the dialog went away.

The Surfboard app was still showing in Programs and Features, so I knew it hadn’t completed the uninstall process. To keep it from starting up again, I found the directory where PanelApp.exe lived (c:\users\name\AppData\Local\ of all places!) and renamed it to PanelApp.old. I also started up msconfig, found PanelApp in the list of startup programs and disabled it there. I then rebooted the machine.

Now that the Surfboard Tracking Application wasn’t running any more, I tried Firefox again and it crashed again when FireFTP started a file transfer. Firefox immediately crashed. I ran Process Explorer again to see if there was something running that I’d missed. Sure enough, I found that Surfboard had added an add-on to Firefox called PanelApp BHO. I clicked the add-on and was given the option to Disable, but the Uninstall button was greyed out. I clicked Disable, restarted Firefox and tried FireFTP again.

This time I was able to get a clean file transfer so the problem obviously was the PanelApp BHO add-on. So, with that out of the way, I tried the uninstall again from the Control Panel.

I started the uninstall and let it run while I did some other things. Finally, I went to bed and left the system running. The dialog was still there in the morning “configuring…”! I went into Task Manager, killed the process and noticed that the dialog flashed a message of some kind just before it closed.

I checked Programs and Features and the Surfboard entry is gone, so the uninstall process at least got that far. The add-on still shows up in the Firefox add-on list, but I’ll get rid of that, too.

Needless to say, I’m not a big fan of Surfboard Technologies right about now. Just a word of warning if you’re presented with the opportunity to install it on your machine. My advice is don’t!

John The Geek

Windows XP Service Pack 3 continues to have difficulties playing nice with other software, or vice-versa. Now it’s been found that Norton software behaves strangely after SP3 is installed. Just what SP3 needs…more good news.

On the other hand, it’s a good case for dumping Norton. Back in the day I was a big fan of the original Norton Utilities. Unfortunately, those days are long gone and if I buy a computer now with Norton on it, one of the first things I do is uninstall Norton and put AVG on the machine. I happen to prefer AVG, but there are many viable alternatives these days to the bloated, bog-slow, intrusive Norton software.

McAfee Antivirus is almost as bad, so I won’t have that on any of my machines, either. I haven’t heard of any conflicts between McAfee Antivirus and SP3 yet, but it won’t surprise me if I do. We use the enterprise version of McAfee Antivirus at work and we’ve had a number of conflicts with our enterprise software applications that were traced back to McAfee Antivirus and required patches or workarounds for one or both applications.

It’s becoming even more obvious that unless you desperately need SP3 for some reason, you should avoid upgrading until Microsoft and the hardware and software folks get these issues worked out. They will get resolved, it’s just a question of when.

John The Geek

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Those of us still using Windows XP are hearing a lot about Service Pack 3 lately.  Windows XP SP3 has been released for a while now and the usual reports of problems are being received from the early adopters who have already installed it.  It’s good that there are those brave (or foolish) enough to install a new service pack as soon as it’s available.  The rest of us can sit back and watch the fireworks from a safe distance!

My advice is to wait a while before installing SP3.  Hewlett-Packard (HP) has warned owners of their PCs with AMD processors not to install SP3.  There is a known problem where the machines continually reboot after SP3 is installed.  That’s just one example of problems found in the field in the short time SP3 has been available to the public.

Any software upgrade of this magnitude is bound to have some glitches.  Windows XP is a very complex piece of software, actually multiple pieces of software, and catching all the potential bugs in the testing process is simply impossible.  There are too many variables with PC configurations and applications for any testing program to cover every possible combination.

If you’re concerned about the end of life of Windows XP SP2, don’t be.  Microsoft will continue to support SP2 until August of 2009, so you have over a year before you have to worry about that.  By that time SP3 will be stable and you’ll probably have installed it long since.

As with most newly released software, unless there’s a feature or bug fix you absolutely have to have, it’s safer to wait until it’s been released long enough for most of the more serious bugs to be found and fixed.  SP3 adds some features, but the vast majority of those features aren’t things that the average user will even notice.  In short, if you’re not sure you need SP3, you don’t, yet.

Here are some related posts from the blogosphere:

Windows XP Service Pack 3 woes – Windows XP holdouts were blinded by a ray of hope with the release of Service Pack 3, a major update consisting of existing patches with a few enhancements thrown in that has been widely reported to significantly boost significant …

Does your AMD-based computer boot after installing XP SP3? – Last night WSUS deployed XP Service Pack 3 to the sole remaining computer running XP that I have. This morning, I came down and was greeted with incessant reboots. The computer booted, apologized for not being able to boot properly, …

HP recommends against installing Windows XP SP3 – Both HP and Microsoft are working to fix problems causing AMD-based PCs to reboot repeatedly after XP Service Pack 3 is loaded. In the meantime, security expert Dr. Jesper Johansson has beaten the companies to the punch by devising a …

XP Change Corrupts Data, Halts SP3 Rollout – XP Change Corrupts Data, Halts SP3 Rollout Microsoft also suspends autodelivery of Windows Vista SP1. Computerworld — Microsoft Corp. confirmed on Wednesday that it delayed the rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) because changes …

Fix for Restart Bug after installing Windows XP SP3 – You can only use the following information if you use a non-Intel processor and encounter the previously mentioned restart bug after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. I’m going to list two possible solutions, one from Microsoft and …

Microsoft blocks Windows XP SP3 update to HP PCs Running AMD CPU’s – The recent Windows XP Service Pack 3 update has left certain AMD-based PCs manufactured by Hewlett-Packard caught in an endless reboot (here) cycle caused by an Intel-specific disk image mistakenly being used with AMD hardware. …

[bit-tech] XP SP3 breaks WHS RDP – According to a post on the Windows Home Server Forums provided by Microsoft, users with Service Pack 3 installed on their Windows XP desktop may well find themselves unable to connect to their Windows Home Server box via the Remote …

John The Geek

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I’m a big fan of ViralURL. I use it for many of my marketing promotions and have been very happy with it. However, I’ve recently discovered a problem with it that could very well be affecting many marketers, including myself.

If you’ve been an Internet marketer for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the $7 Script. The $7 Script makes it possible to promote a product by giving the affiliate promoting the product 100% commissions paid directly to their PayPal account. This is obviously very appealing to affiliates as they get paid immediately when a sale occurs rather than waiting for monthly commission payments. I promote a number of products that use the $7 Script and have had good success with it.

A customer of mine recently emailed me to say that he was trying to purchase a product I’d recommended, but when he clicked the PayPal order button, an error occurred and he wasn’t able to proceed further. After some back and forth with him we determined that the problem was only happening in Internet Explorer. It worked fine in Firefox when I tried it.

That particular promotion used a ViralURL redirection link, so on a hunch I tried accessing the site by using the actual affiliate URL instead of the ViralURL link. It worked fine in both Firefox and IE. So, we had isolated the problem to Internet Explorer through the ViralURL link. I reported the problem to the site owner and ViralURL.

To make a long story short, the site owner tried a change suggested by ViralURL and it didn’t resolve the problem. At this point it was a toss-up as to whether it was a problem with the site or with ViralURL. What bugged me about it was that it only happened in IE, not Firefox.

Last night, I found another site that uses the $7 Script and doesn’t work correctly in IE through a ViralURL link. When clicking the PayPal order button, there is no blatant error as in the first site, but the PayPal page comes up mostly blank with a Retry link instead of the login page that should appear. I’ve reported the problem to ViralURL and we’ll see where it goes from there.

The bottom line is: if you promote sites that use the $7 Script and you use ViralURL to cloak your links I recommend you use a different redirection method for those sites until ViralURL gets the problem resolved. Even if you test the site successfully on your machine, there’s no guarantee that it won’t fail on someone else’s machine. We ran into this while troubleshooting the problem. It was not a 100% failure rate. Sometimes it worked fine in IE6 and not IE7, sometimes neither one, and sometimes it worked fine on a different computer.

I’m going to identify all the links I have that use the $7 Script and use a different redirection method until ViralURL gets the problem fixed. I have no way of knowing how many people encountered the problem before the person kindly emailed me to tell me about it. I have to assume I’ve lost sales as a result.

Be careful out there!