Microsoft WinXP SP2 Blocks Downloads of Firefox?

n/a ^ | 3/13/05 | Myself

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Late last night, while working on a friend's laptop computer, I noticed something odd. I am posting the story here with visual evidence
to see if anyone else has experienced this.

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8100 running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Among other tasks, I was stripping out his Norton 2003 Anti-Virus
(which decided not to work) and installing AVG Anti-Virus software. After that was done I opened his Internet Explorer and went to Google.com
and searched on "Firefox". The first result had the title "Rediscover the Web".

I clicked on the link and was taken to this page:

.

.

.

I was getting very frustrated by the fact that I could not locate a link to download the product anywhere on the page.
I looked at the source HTML code for the page and the link was clearly embedded in the page but the hyper-link showed up nowhere.

I then turned to my own desktop PC which is running WinXP Service Pack 1. As much as it pained me to do so, I opened Internet Explorer.
I navigated through Google as I did before and when I got to the same URL for Firefox, this is what I saw:

.

.

Notice the sudden appearance of the green and blue boxes on the upper right containing links to Firefox software and products?

Now....except for the obvious explantion to a cynic like me, can anyone explain why Microsoft
would configure SP2 to block the download of Firefox?

Or am I the only one seeing the different web page above?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Nevermind the upheaval going on at Mozilla lately, couldn't have possibly been their fault, could it.

It could have been. That's why I opened a Microsoft Internet Explorer browser on a different machine. My first though was, in fact, that Mozilla.org had effed up and had dropped some links. You must have missed that part of my tale.

And I wouldn't call end-of-lifing an unneeded product, upheaval. Mozilla's capabilities are duplicated by Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla was destined for this the very day they split off the Thunderbird mail client and launched Firebird.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Try adjusting your tinfoil hat-- it might be askew.

I can't. I must leave it as it is. If I move it, I find that the propeller doesn't spin fast enough to drive the little generator that delivers my electro-shock dosage to the implants at the back of my skull.

I did however, find remnants of Norton's Internet Security software on the machine which, when removed, allowed the proper viewing of the webpage...as 'kingu' suggested. Case closed.

[Khurkris]

I run Firefox and dl'd it thri XP Pro SP2. Worked just fine.

However...I do have to shut down Zone Alarm Pro to make dl's with Firefox.

Also, just recently Mozillas fine email client, Thunderbird, mysteriously stopped working for me. It is a fine ptogram but it suddenly cannot connect with my ISP. Very weird.

[Dashing Dasher]

FYI...
I'm using WinXP SP2 also and I was able to see the green and blue boxes when I tried to use IE.

[Terpfen]

It's not evil on the part of Microsoft. The likely explanation is that the laptop is running some sort of content filtering software that blocks out the specific code Mozilla uses to display the DOWNLOAD NOW link.

[js1138]

I didn't have any trouble.

[kevkrom]

Looks like a stylesheet issue... I was able to download Firefox on machines with XP Home SP2 -- just click on the link "make the switch today".

[Lunatic Fringe]

I have XP SP2 and see no problems with the web page.

[SunkenCiv]

Ping!

[SunkenCiv]

maybe Microsoft is just helping defend us all from godless communism:

Communist Software (you may have it)
Minus_273
Posted on 06/07/2004 6:11:34 AM PDT by minus_273
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1149061/posts