Virgin Logo slowdown

[New Bloke]

Whenever I open a PPRuNe page with the Virgin Banner add I get a slow down of my mouse control.

This only normally happens if you are daft enough to visit one of those daft amatuer sites.

Is this effecting anyone else?

[InFinRetirement]

So it's not just me! My cursor does an imitation of a limbless matchstick man trying to jump onto the nearest letter. http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif

[OzPax1]

Same here!! So It's not just my imagination! :mad: I think we'd better tell Danny or one of the Capt's (moderators). Said banner ad actually halted my system on one occasion. http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif..then.. :mad:

OzPax1 http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/cool.gif

[WhiteSail]

It doesn't happen to me, so is there a common factor amongst you all?

For example;

Are you all using a common operating system or internet browser?

Do you all happen to have the same internet provider?

Or something along those lines.

[OzPax1]

My system consist's of the following:-

*WindowsME
*IE6
*ISP is Freeserve


Infin I know uses IE6 same as me. What about you New Bloke?

OzPax1 http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/cool.gif

[New Bloke]

windows 98 on an Ethernet network connected to the Internet via a Cisco 803. ISP is Avnet.

IE 6
but also Mosiac (yes I am old as well as sad) and Netscape. Only tried PPRuNe in IE6, I will try the rest sometime, but with enough people having a problem it seems to be at the server end rather than my end.

[WhiteSail]

IE6 seems to be the common denominator.

I know from reading other computer forums, there are problems with IE6. but whether your problems are related, I don't know.

Suffice to say, many are trying to change back to IE5.5, but I understand it is not a simple task, as changes have to be made to the registry. As I understand it, you cannot just simply overwrite IE6 with IE5.5

Pesonally, I still use IE5.5, which is possibly why I don't get your problem.

Sorry I can't shed any further light on the subject, but a search of any of the many computer forums, will no doubt throw up more information.

[Tinstaafl]

No it's not just IE6. It was happening to me & I use IE5.0.

It was so bad that it made my PC unuseable while the Virgin ad was visible, prompting me to email the powers-that-be.

The problem seems to have been resolved now, at least for me. Anyone else?

I'd love to know what was the cause & what was changed to resolve it.

[Tinstaafl]

Oh merde.

It's back!!! Damn, damn, damn!

[New Bloke]

Still doing it, perhaps as there has been no response I should re-post this in the R & N forum......on second thoughts...

I can bearly use my machine when one of these logos is on the page. If I see it now I just judder my mouse onto the shutdown button and leave.

[New Bloke]

Being the Nice Bloke that I am I have checked that it is indeed a IEvn problem. In doing so I remembered why I like Netscape.

So, in IE, Virgin adverts makes the computer almost unusable, in Netscape I don't even notice.

It is still a bit of a problem as I would guess a very high percentage of users use IE and quite a few of those will just stop comming here if it is that bad.

[stickyb]

I hardly ever even glance at the ads, so haven't seen a virgin one.
Even so, haven't had any slowdowns at all. Am using IE6

[fobotcso]

This problem, that only affects a minority, is independent of the IE version, so it must depend on individual system configurations.

My system is unaffected. It's a Dell Dimension 500MHz, RAM is 256MB, Cache is 512KB and I use IE 5.5. There's lots of room on the Boot hard drive (HD).

If your HD is getting too full, the system may slow down because the Virtual RAM which is swapped out to the pagefile.sys on the HD can't cope. Banner ads put a premium on the processor and virtual memory. Your pagefile.sys should be at least the same size as your RAM.

Microsoft have a bit about this in their Knowledge Base and will advise you to check that some essential files such as Kernel32.dll, ctl32.dll etc may have been overwritten by a program you have added since Windows was installed. The result could be that the version you now have is older than the current MS version.

One way to check is to look at the file dates in your \Windows\System folder and see if there are any that have a date out of the ordinary. If you want to put back the Microsoft version there are instructions on how to do this on their site(provided you have the Windows disc). I'll post the instructions here if anyone would like me to. Or I'll e-mail files as attachments if that would be a help.

[Tinstaafl]

Found a partial solution!

Disable 'play animations' in IE's 'Tools...Internet Options....Advanced' menu. It's under the 'Multimedia' section.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you prefer) this will disable all animations, including every other ad and the smilies etc. Is there something screwy in the HTML for that particular ad? No other ad has this effect.

Completely stops the problem. That $%^& Virgin ad that caused the problem doesn't get past the first screen display now. Wouldn't even know it's Virgin apart from the colour. :)

[PPRuNe Dispatcher]

There is nothing unusual about the HTML for the Virgin Atlantic ad. The gif image is loaded from a Virgin Atlantic site.

---PPRuNe Dispatcher

[Tinstaafl]

In that case there must be something screwy in the feed from/at Virgin's server.

No other ad causes this problem. Would it be possible to test it by caching/hosting the Virgin .gifs on the PPRuNe server for a week or so? Just as a test.

It's just that when every other ad & animation works fine, but one particular ad screws up people's PC, it strongly points to something at fault on the ad end of things. This problem seemed to happen to a range of PC setups & software so I can't see anything else in common.

As it is now, I get none of the ads (unless the 1st gif has the company name on it...) because I have to disable animations to make PPRuNe useable. Bit contrary to the whole purpose of the ads, I feel.

[PPRuNe Dispatcher]

After the graphic has been downloaded your computer will have no connection to Virgin's server. Downloading the graphic from PPRuNe instead of VAs machines will make no difference (except we will pay for that internet traffic instead of Richard Branson)

One problem might be your antivirus software. Some of them, esp. if set to "check every file whenever it is accessed" can cause a huge slowdown. Dr. Solomon's, which in most other ways is one of the best antivirus progs. around suffers from this problem.

---PPRuNe Dispatcher

[Tinstaafl]

I'll try disabling it. Thanks for the suggestion.

Are all the .gifs pulled from their respective advertiser's own websites? Also, do the ones with the same animation as Virgin's ad all use the same HTML?

[PPRuNe Dispatcher]

We have two kinds of ads on PPRuNe - those directly aimed at the aviation community (VA, Ryanair, multiflight, ...) - I'll call thse "type 1" ads - and more general ads such as the BT and Dell ads - I'll call these "type 2" ads. Some forums have a type 1 ad at the top of each page, some have a type 2. Every forum also has a type 2 ad at the bottom.

All of the type 2 ads (e.g. BT, Dell computers etc) have the .gif stored remotely. We don't know where, and we don't care.

Some of type 1 ads have the .gif stored on our server, some are stored elsewhere. We prefer it if these .gifs are stored on an advertisers own website as then if they want to update it they can do so without requiring us to do anything. Type 1 ads all use pretty much the same HTML.

---PPRuNe Dispatcher

[Tinstaafl]

Thanks PPRuNe Despatcher.

Interestingly, the slowdown effect seems to have stopped without me making any changes whatsoever.

Very curious... http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/confused.gif

[PPRuNe Dispatcher]

Maybe Virgin changed the .gif to be more user-friendly.....?

(User-friendly? Most computers are as user-friendly as a cornered rat!)

---PPRuNe Dispatcher

[OzPax1]

And then some PD! And then some!

The often quoted "bu**ger, What the F**ck is it doing now!" being very familar to most of us! :) :)

[PaperTiger]

I did look at the gif in question (the 'Aspire' one, yes ?). Biggish 11K, but otherwise bog standard animation - nothing fishy. Only thing I can think of is the Virgin server was slow to respond and now they've speeded it up.

[Tinstaafl]

In that case, thank you Virgin!