I recently began having this issue and it was getting pretty annoying. This was with Firefox 2.0.0.14 (most current non beta) on Vista.
It turns out that I had recently allowed Skype to install it’s add-on that highlights phone numbers to ease making calls from your computer using Skype. I came upon the solution in this discussion.
Uninstalling the Skype add-on resolved the issue for me.
I bet upgrading to XP would have also fixed it.
Are you getting the ‘new crop’ of “I’m a Mac, adn I’m a PC adds” down there?
— yoga studio owner that freeks out
— “PC’s Living with Vista” support group with one that goes into a loop and needs to be rebooted
— Mac and a shrink convince PC that the problems are not his fault, and he finally sees the light and deceides “It’s Mac’s fault”.
Heh, well, you’re right there. The task scheduler in XP worked like a charm for my purposes.
As far as those PC / MAC ads go, even when I’m skipping all the commercials with my TIVO, I will rewind when I see it’s one of those. I should put a bumpersticker on my car “Will Rewind for Entertaining Ads” 🙂
I’ve seen only the 2nd of the 3 that you mention. I’ll keep a lookout for the other two.
I deceided to try and find a collection of these comercials on the net like the “will it blend” series. Perhaps they will actually someday sell a DVD of the whole series like the ‘will it blend’ series.
I did find:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298&q=microsoft+ipod
since I know you like your iPod.
and 10 consecutive ones, 6 or 7 I had not seen before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siSHJfPWxs8
and one more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Io_kTSp5g&feature=related
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI92qHu4sbA&feature=related
and a few of the parodies are not bad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZBjmzQzpMU&feature=related
And lastly, a fast way to load windows vista. (Claims to be doable in 2 minutes).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbf9tOGwno&feature=related
Thank you for those King! They were *most* entertaining! Some of the PC / Mac ads I *think* I’ve seen before but can’t be 100% sure. But there were plenty that I’d missed before.
I’ve been brainwashed after seeing so many ads. Macs are good… Macs are perfect… must… have… a… Mac…
Well, thanks to strange noise, smoke and then NOTHING comming out of my PC, I’m now one of those living with Vista.
Fun! (sort of…) What did you end up getting?
Not really fun, I’ll send you a private message on other stuff. What I got was an ACER model Aspire M5100. Vista Home Premium, AMD Phenom X38400 triple-core processor, 3 gig RAM, 500 gig hard drive.
I figured with all the problems Vista has, I’d better go for a system that shipped with it, and I can always go back and put XP on the machine if it comes to that.
Due to personal issues, I’ve had very little time to do anything with the system, but so far it’s not as bad as I was expecting.
All the ‘extra prompting’ is about the same as I had configured my XP system to give. (I’m a little paranoid about security) so thats not really a problem for me.
MR2 is working fine (I’ll try the blind copy test again soon). I had a bit of chalange to get the week of mail downloaded from Rogers (the first few attempts it only downloaded the SPAM), but now it’s getting everything.
When I plugged in my USB printer, it could not find a driver, so wanted the original install disk. While I’m sure I have it somewhere, I don’t know where, so VISTA offered “let me find a solution for you” so I said yes. It came back with “download the drivers from the maker’s website.” I thought “DUH”, I knew that, but when I clicked OK, it took me directly to the download page, where all I had to enter was the printer model number for a list of about 6.
After completing that process, it gave some strange error about the drivers were NOT installed.
However, after my next reboot, the instalation of printer drivers just magically started up again, and Voila, my printer is working fine.
I bought a cheap (25 bucks anohter store has them for 18.99, but by time I would have driven out of my way, it was cheaper to pay the extra 6 bucks) external USB case for the hard drive from my old PC, so I could get the data off it (glad I had not used encryption). Well, there are no VISTA drivers for it, and VISTA would not recognize it, and the ‘let me help’ options did not do any good this time. Again however, after a reboot, with the USB still plugged in, my old drive is visible, and now it can be plugged in and out.
The Stock analysis software (Vector Vest) that I use is working fine as far as I can tell, and my stock broker (Interactive Brokers) trader workstation software appears to work, but i have not had time to do more than log in and check my account.
King
Hey King,
That’s interesting what you say about installing drivers and such – having them apparently fail – and then things are right as rain on the next boot up. My experience with my scanner software and a couple of other pieces (the names of which elude me at the moment) was strikingly similar.
In the case of the scanner, I was already researching replacements when I needed to recycle the machine (as you know I only reboot it when I absolutely have to, so it can be days or weeks (OK… Windows… days…)) and suddenly things were working perfectly. This in spite of Vista very clearly saying “YOU GOT IT WRONG! *DANGER* WILL ROBINSON *DANGER*” and several other messages that I interpreted in a similar manner.
As far as UAC, that miserable concept lasted exactly 8 minutes on my machine before I got so fed up with it that I disabled it for my account. What a terrible idea (for me anyway). Although I do give kudos to M$ for providing an easy way to disable it…
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141343.asp
(title of story is: Man Gets Windows Vista to Work With Printer)
Charles is no relation to me (as far as I know).
Well, all I can say is that’s quite the mess! It looks like they’re sorting things out though. But I suppose that’s the risk one takes with using drivers for one OS on another OS. Since the drivers’ main task is to mediate b/n hardware and the OS.