Not StatCounter's fault but I'm just venting

[webado]

Every so often Windows Explorer bombs out and some cookies and even some of the cached pages end up being deleted automatically when it so inelegantly shuts down. This together with some icons appearing in the task bar, though those respective programs still continue working.

Well, where this bugs me the most of course in when the StatCounter blocking cookies get deleted and I have to go and enable those all over again. Lots of others too.

Oddly enough it seems only some types of cookies get deleted, the blocking cookies being among these. The cookies used for staying logged in appear safe from that. I don't know what determines which cookies get dumped, it may be just hazard or it may be the latest cookies and history pages accessed.

Another oddity is that immediately after such a (minor) crash, if I don't reboot, some of the cached pages are wiped out, yet, after I reboot, they reappear. Not so the cookies.

Aaaaaaaargh! :evil:

[webado]

LOL! Thanks :) I thought it was cute too:)

[paulzon]

Dear Christina,

The reason why you are losing some cookies but keeping others is probably because most of your cookies are being saved in one folder in your operating system (the one which is emptied when you delete cookies in your browser), and the other more persistent ones are being saved in another folder within your documents. I am writing from the point of Windows, but Macs are similar too. Slightly belated answer, but better late than never!

regards from Paul.

www.zonicweb.net

[webado]

Dear Christina,

The reason why you are losing some cookies but keeping others is probably because most of your cookies are being saved in one folder in your operating system (the one which is emptied when you delete cookies in your browser), and the other more persistent ones are being saved in another folder within your documents. I am writing from the point of Windows, but Macs are similar too. Slightly belated answer, but better late than never!

regards from Paul.

www.zonicweb.net

You're right of course, Paul, but I am actually complaining about situations when I am not consciously deleting cookies myself, that I can understand and explain away. I am complaining about those times when IE or, more often, Windows Explorer, bombs out and appears to dump (or hide) some of the cookies in a seemingly arbitrary manner. Weirder yet when these same cookies seem to reappear without me having done anything more than close all IE windows and reopen IE. It seems to do the same with some history pages.

And yes, I have noticed that there are umpteen cookie folders around. I know of some applications like some forums where admin can specify the path to the cookie that is set, so I suppose that would be one of the reasons why.

This makes me think that perhaps some cookies are stored and retrieved using a relative path and occasionally that may result in actually different absolute paths being used depending on some internal system pointers. When things go bump who knows where such a pointer may point? I know nothing about the internal workings of Windows to put my finger on what's happening. I often have several IE and Windows Explorer windows opened concurrently. They share a lot of the same basic Explorer code, but there are enough differences I'm sure at least in the way they bomb out.

I don't generally clean up cookies unless I have problems. I use spybot and adaware to clean up the known nasty ones.

[paulzon]

Sounds horrendously complicated Christina! ... as does running both spybot AND ad aware which are the same types of application! If you have cookies which don't go into the two folders I mentioned above, this would be highly strange, and they are almost certainly up to no good. If you are browsing alot, it is always a good idea to delete cookies, files and to clear history on a reasonably regular basis. As you know, IE may crash occasionally if you are a very busy browser, but your REAL problem seems to be that your WINDOWS Explorer is crashing on a regular basis. Do you have enough RAM to open all of those application windows? if you do, you may be having a problem with your Operating System (unless you are running Windows ME in which case it is quite normal!).

How long is it since you did your last install? ... unless you don't use your system very much, or you are incredibly organized and fastidious they tend to deteriorate over the years (much like ourselves!) and weird things may start to happen. I am a programmer, so I know about instruction pointers, relative / absolute addresses, hashtables and the like, but I always find that it is better just to reinstall stuff if it is crashing regularly, and there is no sign of an obvious problem, such as a virus, too little memory, resource conflict etc.

regards from Paul. www.zonicweb.net

ps I like your little kitten thing too!

[artmine]

I use the combo of Spybot and Ad-aware also, and have been instructed to by my pc administrator. There was a time when I just used Ad-aware before Spybot arrived on the scene. When spybot became available it took adaware by surprise by keeping a much more thorough database and by updating more often. Then adaware took the hint and the two got into an "update and keep current" war. So now I use both, for one will invariably find things the other misses.

At this point in their evolution neither is sufficent without the other if you do huge amounts of surfing, at least that is the situation as I see it.

Try running them both, one immediately after the other, and I'll be surprised if you find one that does all the cleaning. Surfing just little, take few chances and then you might not see a difference.

Both clean grassstains, but one gets blood out and one gets wine out.

[webado]

Not complicated unless I have to reinstall everything and then I have to remember how to set everything up again. My memory and patience aren't what they used to be... :)


The reason some cookies go to different cookie folders may well be because some web sites direct them to. I know for a fact that some forum software like Invision Power Board has an option to define the cookie path.

My Windows Explorer bombs out occasionally when I hover over some types of media file names (such as mp3 or others). This is when it wipes out some cookies or parts of the history folder. I currently have a small problem with my sound card which may require that I change it or at least resinstall the software associated with it, and the problems may be related. I haven't had time to investigate since it's not really critical (yet). And no, I don't have a ram problem, I have 512MB and this is generally sufficient for all my applications.


Windows 2000 which is what I use on my main pc and all its appendages get updated automatically by Microsoft whenever there are any updates available, as well as my antivirus.

I run Spybot in the background all the time and update it regularly plus run it every so often explicitly. Adaware is updated and run daily. A pop-up killer is active (from the Google toolbar) at all times as well. Touch wood, I haven't had any nasty critters get in since I've used all these weapons in concert. The antivirus runs automatically overnight, every night.

The reason I don't re-install windows regularly is that when I do so I have to reinstall a myriad of other software as well, including all the drivers for all the devices I have, which never really install properly through Plug and Play. I'd only reinstall windows if it became inoperational, and this hasn't happened on this pc lately - at least not since I had a hd crash last year and had to change the hd - thus massive reinstallation of everything. I had to do it recently on my laptop and it wasn't pretty. Every program that had been installed on it had to be reinstalled and reconfigured because of their insistance of getting installed in the registry (I'd like to strangle the one who invented THAT!). It took all day just to get a working environment and it was a good thing I happened to have a bunch of installation cd's with me, since I was travelling at the time and I must have had a premonition they would come in handy.

I do clear cookies and history occasionally, like when I have unexplained problems connecting with the browser, which happens rarely. I don't like it because then I have to sign in again on all the sites where I sign in usually, so I have to remember details of the sign-in for each one.

What I do clear more frequently are the temp folders, as they eat up space.

I am not an indiscriminate web surfer, so mercifully I don't pick up a lot of nasties along the way.:) Touch wood.