Another FF & Javascript question--split

[lebel]

Hi - new forum participant here - do forgive me if I'm piggybacking in the wrong place, but googling a youtube error message led me here and I'm still wildly confused. The following is an email I've sent to a friend, which I hope accurately sums up my problem. I don't quite understand the 'no script' and 'allow' advice mentioned earlier in this thread. I believe I'm using Firefox 1.0, but can't really figure out how to tell.

Many thanks for any help!


EMAIL:
I'm puzzled & irritated - thought maybe you could help. Remember, I'm PC illiterate, so talk to me like I'm 5 if you're able to help.

So there i was watching youtube nonsense last night... took a break, came back 45 minutes later, suddenly completely unable to watch youtube. Got the following message on yt page when I clicked a vid:

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

HUH? How did I turn it off? How do I turn it ON?

Confused, I went to the adobe site to get said flash player, and got this from adobe:

We are unable to locate a Web player that matches your platform and browser.

Please visit our table of recommended Web players .

So I did that, downloaded the standard Flash 9 (which I thought I had), but still, no youtube.

I am finding life without youtube rough. And I have no idea how to turn JavaScript ON - let alone how it got turned off in the first place.

Do you have any idea what's going on here? Any help would be great. I'm using a pretty standard Dell, limited hard drive but still plenty of space available, operating Firefox & WindowsME. Never had a prob with youtube vids before & other vid sites like myspace still play just fine. I'm worried that in my efforts to try to "fix" this, I'm fouling the PC up even more.

[mjc]

lebel, I'm splitting this off to its own thread....

To answer the first part of your question...

Go to Help => About FireFox (in FireFox) it will pop up a bit of information, including the version number. Post back with that info...

[lebel]

mjc - Thanks for relocating & your patience!

I am on Firefox 1.0.

Things I've done since my post... I opened I.E., which I never use because some sorta infection thing clicks on everytime I hit a key... But I did so to see if youtube works on that, and it does. It only fails me on Firefox, this despite the fact that when I go to "Tools," JavaScript is indeed enabled.

Apologies - I have an enormous PC phobia for whatever reason when problems arise. My pulse just explodes and I fear doing more harm than good when trying to fix. It's frustrating. Anyway - thanks for the help - any further tips?

[lebel]

Additional info:

I am literally googling this to death & have uncovered the following, which may or may not be good to know. It comes from http://youtubestatus.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, October 24, 2007
UPDATE: JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player.

ERROR: "Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player."
Users with ad-blocking software enabled may not be able to see videos due to a conflict with our flash detection code and may see this error. Our engineers are still working on resolving this issue but it is expected to be fixed soon. If you are unable to see any videos because of this issue, you may want to try temporarily disabling ad-blocking in your browser or security software. Thanks for your patience.

Update (10/29/2007, 3:41 pm PDT):
This issue has been resolved for users with ad-blocking software.

Interesting. Of course being fully PC illiterate, I have no idea how to disable ad-blocking and am afraid to even try!

[mjc]

Well, there seems to be a bit more to your problem than is apparent with the FF part of it. If you have some sort of lingering infection, that will need to be cleaned up, first, so please post a HijackThis log...

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=60009

Just put the Flash player/youtube bit on hold for now...

[lebel]

This I.E. "infection" is something I've worked around for years - I just don't open I.E. Essentially, it's something called "afcimaz" that tries to run everytime I boot the computer and/or type while in I.E. Long ago, I attempted to remove this through using hijack, spybot, ad infinitum. This issue in and of itself was a panic attack I'd rather not relive, and I've been assured by someone far more PC savvy than I that so long as I stay on Friefox, all will be fine.

I do understand that you're trying to help me, and I'm sorry if I'm not being cooperative. I'm not rational when it comes to computers & solutions. I have tried to tackle the hijack process and such before, and I just didn't understand what people were trying to tell me.

I have also located a discussion on bytes.com wherein many others have had this same problem, yet few had the same (if any) solution. Would it be bad form to post a link to another forum here so someone might tell me if anything in there is in fact the solution?

[lebel]

A quick update: After trying countless ideas as suggested by others who've posted the same question elsewhere, and having exactly zero success, I upgraded to Firefox 2.0 and everything on youtube works as it did before I had a meltdown and sufficiently shredded my nerves.

Don't know how that happened, but I'm happy. For now.

Thank you SO much for your assistance, mjc! I'll peek back in from time to time - perhaps you'll have further thoughts on what happened. This was maddening - especially given that youtube had a section in their help center specifically about this error message, and nothing helped.

PC panic. I'm not alone, yeah?

[jlreich]

FF 1.0 is from 3 years ago I think. :eek: That was most likely your problem. A lot has happened to FF since 1.0, and to sites like YouTube. ;)

You should always use the latest version of FF. :)

[lebel]

Yeah, I'm not exactly vigilant with PC upkeep :rolleyes:

That said, everything went from status quo to absolutely no youtube in just 30 minutes - 30 minutes wherein I did no work on the computer. It was puzzling. Ultimately the simple loss of youtube is just silly when it comes to the stress it created... But I guess it's just emblematic of my overall struggles when I have computer issues. I try things as advised, a problem snowballs, and I'm just left feelin' all helpless. I try to learn, but it all moves so fast and the language is total Sanskrit to me. Luckily my vocation allows me a world wherein my PC is essentially a glorified typewriter... but I do have my recreational & research things on the net. Losing the youtube follies would've been sad.