This morning I stupidly went into FireFox cookies and messed about, I shouldn't have since I've no idea what I did. However, now YouTube won't work. It gets the video but will not 'play', it plays for an instant when I hit the play button but the stops, if I hit the 'play' button like I'm in a shoot'em'up, it works frame by frame, but won't properly 'play'.

In addition, I can not login into the forum, and get the following error!

 

Everything works perfectly in 'Chrome' so it's not a PC issue, just a FireFox one. I have tried a 'refresh' function in FireFox, and also played about with the 'hardware acceleration' option, nothing will get me back to were I was.

Help!!

Does it work okay in a private window? You might need to clear all cookies. Refresh only resets settings and extensions, it keeps cookies. Private window will let you use the internet without your existing cookies, just as a test. It will then delete the new ones when you close the window though.

Just a thought, have you got DRM ticked ?

Don't know exactly what it does but unticking it stops some YouTube videos.

Just now, alexp999 said:

Does it work okay in a private window?...

No, it didn't, however I literally just fixed it minutes ago! I noticed that I wasn't logged into 'google' and wondered if that would make a difference. When I tried logging in, I got one of the most useful popup error messages ever. It said, 'my cookies were disabled'...

I must have done something accidentally when I was under the hood earlier. Reset browser to operate with cookies, and all now back to normal.

I shouldn't really be let out without adult supervision 🤣

Just now, StephenFord said:

No, it didn't, however I literally just fixed it minutes ago! I noticed that I wasn't logged into 'google' and wondered if that would make a difference. When I tried logging in, I got one of the most useful popup error messages ever. It said, 'my cookies were disabled'...

I must have done something accidentally when I was under the hood earlier. Reset browser to operate with cookies, and all now back to normal.

I shouldn't really be let out without adult supervision 🤣

Yeah the internet will generally be unusable with cookies disabled. Especially anything that requires logging in.

I have just watched 3 x 45 minute videos, and have just realised, I wasn't interrupted once with an 'ad', has YouTube now dropped that ridiculous strategy of forcing an ad every 6 minutes?

2 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

I have just watched 3 x 45 minute videos, and have just realised, I wasn't interrupted once with an 'ad', has YouTube now dropped that ridiculous strategy of forcing an ad every 6 minutes?

It depends on the channel. Some turn off mid roll ads. 

23 minutes ago, alexp999 said:

It depends on the channel. Some turn off mid roll ads. 

The channel I was watching (https://www.youtube.com/c/WristwatchRevival) just last week displayed numerous ads, I'm hoping that YouTube have found another funding stream LOL

I notice that AdBlock had recently updated and now has a tag line that they block YouTube ads! What a great wee extension!

1 minute ago, StephenFord said:

I notice that AdBlock had recently updated and now has a tag line that they block YouTube ads! What a great wee extension!

Just one of the reasons Firefox is infinitely better than Chrome or any of its derivatives. Google are crippling adblockers to try and protect their revenue. 

If you are now all sorted with FireFox then I would also recommend uBlock Origin as another adblocker.  I have been using it for ages now and switched to it over AdBlock Plus a year or so ago when AdBlock Plus broke for a few months.

 

9 hours ago, Zico said:

If you are now all sorted with FireFox then I would also recommend uBlock Origin as another adblocker.  I have been using it for ages now and switched to it over AdBlock Plus a year or so ago when AdBlock Plus broke for a few months.

 

Ublock origin is what I use. It’s the most powerful blocker but not very user friendly. 
 

Adguard is one I usually recommend for an easier interface. 

1 minute ago, alexp999 said:

Ublock origin is what I use. It’s the most powerful blocker but not very user friendly. 
 

Adguard is one I usually recommend for an easier interface. 

I have used AdBlock for years, but on suggestion I have now just installed uBlock. Unsure of why it's not 'user friendly' as I just went into settings and the only thing I changed was to stop it showing me how many ads it's blocking! Am I missing something that you consider to be unfriendly?

28 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

I have used AdBlock for years, but on suggestion I have now just installed uBlock. Unsure of why it's not 'user friendly' as I just went into settings and the only thing I changed was to stop it showing me how many ads it's blocking! Am I missing something that you consider to be unfriendly?

It can break things very easily. It's got a lot of advanced settings and options without much explanation.

That's great if you can get on with it ok, just be careful changing settings you don't understand.

Also, make sure you are using uBlock Origin, not Ublock.

For friends and family I usually recommend Adguard, just because they are less likely to break something and cause me a phone call, lol.

Am 24 hrs into going back to Edge, and thus far seems ok, Firefox and Chrome run endless processes in the background strangling resources no amount of tweaking will stop or slow it.

Now to find a blocker on it i can live with.

13 minutes ago, Jimpster said:

Am 24 hrs into going back to Edge, and thus far seems ok, Firefox and Chrome run endless processes in the background strangling resources no amount of tweaking will stop or slow it.

Now to find a blocker on it i can live with.

Edge runs background processes too. All modern browsers are multi-threaded and multi-process. It means that if the tab you are viewing freezes, it doesn't freeze the whole browser and makes better use of modern multi-core/multi-thread CPUs.

Edge can often lie about it's memory usage because the engine is run as a background Windows service anyway.

Google Chrome is bloated sure, the problem with Edge is that the engine is still controlled by Google and will still have crippled adblockers.

Edge is just Microsoft Chrome.

Firefox is going to the the only browser will full extension support for adblockers to work properly. Mozilla Foundation is non-profit and it is their own browser engine. Unlike the 50 different versions of Chrome that exist, which Google control and rather conveniently the advertising company is trying to break adblockers.

What is your total memory usage? People get confused thinking something is a memory hog, but if the memory is available applications are programmed to use it. The more that can be cached to memory instead of reading and writing to disk, the better performance you'll get. Unless it is causing you out of memory errors don't worry about it.

1 hour ago, alexp999 said:

 

Also, make sure you are using uBlock Origin, not Ublock.

 

By sheer fluke, I appear to have downloaded the correct one 😂

I appreciate background processes are a necessary evil, maybe Edge at the moment handles them better. Have had Upwards of 20 processes running and my CPU at 100% and a crippled laptop with Chrome and FF, Why do you need so many processes when as with most users you only have one tab or favourite open at a time. I currently only have here FOC open yet ive 13 processes and pushing 100% CPU, my laptop is no slouch power wise.

Thread for the browser UI

Thread for background sync

Thread for current tab javascript

Thread for current tab renderer

Thread for extension handler

Thread for each extension 

Multiple threads to pre-load the next page or pages it expects you to click on.

Thats just a few off the top of my head. You shouldn’t be pinned at 100% CPU all the time though unless it is particularly old and weak. What CPU is it?

Device name    
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1035G1 CPU @ 1.00GHz   1.19 GHz
Installed RAM    32.0 GB (31.8 GB usable)
Device ID    213A1094-FFCC-408F-B824-B8CE3BD1B303
Product ID    00330-80000-00000-AA462
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch    No pen or touch input is available for this display
 

7 hours ago, Jimpster said:

Device name    
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1035G1 CPU @ 1.00GHz   1.19 GHz
Installed RAM    32.0 GB (31.8 GB usable)
Device ID    213A1094-FFCC-408F-B824-B8CE3BD1B303
Product ID    00330-80000-00000-AA462
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch    No pen or touch input is available for this display
 

Can’t see any reason that would struggle to run Firefox. Even bloated Chrome should be fine. 

On 3/29/2024 at 11:16 PM, Zico said:

If you are now all sorted with FireFox then I would also recommend uBlock Origin as another adblocker.  I have been using it for ages now and switched to it over AdBlock Plus a year or so ago when AdBlock Plus broke for a few months.

 

I have now disabled, 'uBlock Origin', as I could find no way to enable it to operate on 'private browsing'. Went into settings, googled the issue - nothing. Maybe I have missed something really obvious??

It’s a Firefox addon permission/setting

 

If you go to manage addons and check permissions iirc, there is a setting to enable for private windows. 
 

Firefox defaults to addons being disabled on private windows. 

34 minutes ago, alexp999 said:

If you go to manage addons and check permissions iirc, there is a setting to enable for private windows.

No idea how many times I missed that! I'm off for a lie down...