How to kill orbitz pop ups?

The_LED_Museum

*Retired*
Joined
Aug 12, 2000
Messages
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Federal Way WA. USA
Inputting 127.0.0.1 makes the machine look for the popup contents on your local hard drive, and then gives the red "x" or "page cannot be loaded" in the popup's window.

Seems to me I used a similar trick a year or so back to stop popups. I can't remember the URL I got the list of addresses from anymore. But it was a list of web addresses you could copy and paste into your HOSTS.INI file, if I remember correctly. Places like doubleclick and adforce and more were all locked out in popup ads and in those asinine javascript ad banner windows.
 

turbodog

Flashaholic
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Jun 23, 2003
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central time
exactly... typically makes MOST pages load faster because of this. NOTE: it is JUST hosts, not hosts.ini (for that matter the file has NO extension whatsoever)
 

e=mc²

Enlightened
Joined
Oct 2, 2000
Messages
537
Location
NJ - Land of malodorous \"earl\" refineries!
Not to stray too far off topic, but does anybody know the difference between "hosts" and "lmhosts"? (both extensionless)
I run win2K and have both on my machine. Although not identical in contents, there is a similarity in what they do contain.
 

turbodog

Flashaholic
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Jun 23, 2003
Messages
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Location
central time
Further research may be needed, but I am pretty sure they are for manually specifying ip addresses for domain names and/or computer names. They differ in that lmhosts is reserved for computers on your local network and hosts is for outside your subnet/network. I had to look this up for a project once, and I could be TOTALLY wrong. I have had to make entries in BOTH files for a secure WAN to access the computer on the other side.

see also: http://www.labmice.net/networking/lmhosts.htm and http://www.visit-cyberworld.co.uk/library/SHELF5/Building%20an%20Intranet%20with%20Windows%20NT%204/ch6.htm

Enjoy!
 

eluminator

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 7, 2002
Messages
1,750
Location
New Jersey
I've found I get lots of popup windows if I have failed to disable Microsoft's Messenger Service (not the same as Instant Messenger) and have failed to start ZoneAlarm.

I think it would be a good idea for everyone to disable Messenger Service (go to Administrative Tools > Services), and run a firewall like ZoneAlarm.

I also sometimes run Popup Stopper, and who sez you have to hold down the right ctrl key to allow popups? I find the left ctrl key works fine. Maybe I have a left-handed keyboard.
 

snakebite

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 17, 2001
Messages
2,731
Location
dayton oh
put this in hosts.
ads.orbitz.com 127.0.0.1
i think this is the only orbitz entry in my hosts
mine is 396 k
 

_mike_

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 14, 2003
Messages
1,198
Location
Wa. State
This site has information on the hosts file Gorilla Design Studio

(I know, funny name, but it has good information on the hosts file.)

mike

Please note that a saavy parent can use the hosts file to block access to web sites by editing the hosts file. Unless you know about the hosts file, it's almost impossible to figure out. Best of all it's free and simple to do. There are also many pre-made lists that you can use and of course edit to suite your particular needs. The only warning is that you may on occassion need to remove an entry for access to legitimate sites.
 

epro05

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jun 3, 2003
Messages
82
Location
Texas
I use Popup Stopper. Every once in a while it will get into a mode where it will even stop me from opening a new browser window. When it starts doing that, I have to disable Popup Stopper, or do the CTRL key thing. But if I Restart my PC, the problem goes away (I can open many new browser windows and Popup Stopper doesn't prevent it), but a few days later, it will get back into that mode.

Any idea why it does that?
 

_mike_

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 14, 2003
Messages
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Location
Wa. State
epro05,

What operating system are you using and how often do you restart your computer?
I may have a few ideas.

mike
 

epro05

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jun 3, 2003
Messages
82
Location
Texas
I'm using Windows XP. I usually start my computer in the morning and shut it down at night. But sometimes, like today, I restarted midday after installing the latest Windows patch.

BTW, I just re-read the Popup Stopper help screen and there is a preferences box labeled "Enable aggressive Popup Control" that will only allow 1 browser window to be open at a time, but I do not have that box checked. But it seems to acting that way, anyway.
 

_mike_

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 14, 2003
Messages
1,198
Location
Wa. State
Quote from Panicware (makers of Popup Stopper).....
"Panicware products should block all Internet pop-up and pop-under windows.You may receive crashes in your browser if you are running spyware products"

Click here for the page where I found it.

Hope this helps,
mike
 

r2

Enlightened
Joined
Feb 3, 2002
Messages
343
Location
Cambridge, England
I use Mozilla as my main browser and it has built in pop-up blocking. You can also block all images from a server (to get rid of many banner adds) just by right clicking on an image and telling it never to load any more images from that server. In addition, I turn off some other javascript stuff and set it to only play animated GIF images once. Finally, I don't install Flash for Mozilla.

The result is that my normal browsing experience is quite pleasant. Very few adds, no popups, no flashing crap all over the screen all the time. The tabbed browsing is excellent and it has many other advantages over IE.

Sometimes, I actually *want* to see a Flash animation or something like that (though far less often than I would have guessed) so I keep IE around with all that crap installed and turned on. About once a week or so I have to fire it up to look at a specific page, but the vast majority of the time I use Mozilla and don't have to deal with all the crap.

I'd *highly* recommend this setup to anyone who is sick of the garish nightmare that the web has become.

- Russ
 

Ratus

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jan 1, 2003
Messages
138
Location
Miami,FL
I haven't seen a pop up since I installed ZoneAlarm Pro a few years ago. its got a pop-up and banner-ad blocker.

I absolutely hate those Annoying Flash Ads, in particular the ones with sound and seizure inducing blinking lights!/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

I looked all over the web for a tool to just turn off flash and to stop bugging me to install it.

"No! Flash" its a 64k freeware app for MS-Windows(all-versions) it blocks Scripts (Popup Ads, Animated Ads...), Flash(Macromedia Shockwave Flash v6), Images, Videos, Animations (GIF Animation), Sounds.


And since everyone is giving there preference for web browsers here is mine, SlimBrowser, it also has pop-up blocker and lots of other stuff. Best of all its freeware.
 
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