A strange problem.

[cee-dee]

One of the local newspapers is the North Wales Daily Post and since yesterday going on their site crashes my computer. I'll call it a crash because nothing works. Sometimes it'll clear if I wait (a long time) but sometimes it's completely "locked". The pages White out, clicking anything doesn't work. I can't close any tabs, nothing.

Just now the only thing I could do was force a shutdown.

After that I tried going to their site from google with no other pages open. Same thing.

I ran CCleaner and my AV. Tried again, same thing.

I'm using Win 7 and Waterfox browser. (I've not tried it with IE).

I read regional; newspapers from all over the country and no other newspaper site does that. I think NWDP is part of Trinity Mirror and I'm sure I read other papers from that group without a problem.

Any ideas?

[*scyllabub*]

Eek! 

I googled the paper and nervously clicked on this link from the main block of results:

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/

Could not see a problem so clicked on the dailypost.co.uk link and that's OK too.

"Strange" is putting it mildly 😮  Sorry not to be able to help.

[cee-dee]

There must be something on that page that doesn't agree with my system. It has been OK for years and I read other papers websited in the Trinity Mirror group and they're OK. I was just reading a page on the Liverpool Echo and that was OK and the video on the page played out OK too.

There might be a dodgy advert on the page which conflicts with Adblock-Plus?

[*scyllabub*]

Waterfox + ABP and the site is still OK 😕

[cee-dee]

I tried the site again. Page opened up just fine, as I was reading..... same thing!

There must be something on that site that my computer has taken exception to? As said above, I've been to several other sites in the Trinity Mirror group and they're OK.

[cee-dee]

I don't have a virus or any trojans so I used the Windows command prompt sfc/scannow and that came up with some corrupt files that it said it couldn't fix.

I guess they're in the windows event log somewhere but do they need fixing and if so, how?

[cee-dee]

Oh nooo..... It did it on the Livrpool Echo this morning. Looks like other Trinity Mirror sites will follow suit soon? WF is up to date and so is Flash player. Where do I go from here?

[cee-dee]

I get the same result as mentioned on this page:-

https://venturebeat.com/2016/01/25/this-site-crashes-chrome-firefox-and-safari-resets-your-iphone-an...

OK, I know that's about Safari but Windows is mentioned there too. Eventually that message about an unresponsive script appears.

[cee-dee]

I just tried the Liverpool Echo site again. I cancelled the video and was reading the page when it all locked up again. After trying to get the task manager to open, a message appeared below the address bar saying that a script on the page was slowing the browser and what did I want to do so I clicked "Stop it". It stayed locked up for a while alternating between the page re-appearing and being whited out. Eventually I cleared the page but it was a few minutes before my other three tabs opened up properly.

No-on got any ideas?

[*scyllabub*]

No ideas, Cee-Dee, but I did suffer with the 'unresponsive script' problem some time ago, persistently, in IE11 - can't remember the site tho.

[cee-dee]

Well now, I've just been and read a page on the NWDP and it worked OK.

What I'd done was to go to Add-ons, found shockwave flash then clicked "Block Dangerous and Intrusive Flash Content".

[cee-dee]

That was a false dawn. I tried another NWDP link and that same old happening happened, took me 'till now to get back!!!

[cee-dee]

It's definitely something to do with Flash.

I closed all browser tabs and began again leaving the setting I'd made above. I went to the NWDP site and clicked a link and the page opened and it allowed me to read it without a problem except that the video on the page was blacked out. The sound worked though. I went to a sister paper, the MEN and that was the same.

I wondered what would happen on youtube, tried that and it was the same, sound OK but video blacked out. I unchecked, closed the browser completely. Tried youtube again, worked fine.

I wonder if uninstalling Flash Player and re-installing it would fix my problem?

[cee-dee]

I think I might have fixed it. Somehow..... I seemed to have two versions of Flash. I uninstalled one and the problem seems to have gone. I went back to the same pages on the NWDP and was able to read them OK and the videos there played OK.

[*scyllabub*]

---

@cee-deewrote:

I seemed to have two versions of Flash.

---

I've read that this can happen in Chrome but didn't know about other browsers 😮

Anyway, well done!  Bet you levitated with relief 😉

[cee-dee]

You could say that I was juuuuuuust a bit pleased.