(C) 2001 by
Totalidea Software GmbH
http://www.totalidea.de
http://www.tweak-xp.de
support@totalidea.de

Licence Information

For news on Windows XP:

For manual
Windows XP tweaks:

The internet ad blocker

To increase your internet surf speed, Tweak-XP comes with an internet ad blocker. Once activated it will scan the internet pages you visit for unwanted banner ads and block them. The ad-block feature of Tweak-XP was designed to allow a free configuration of the list of ad servers you would like to block.

How to use the internet Ad-Blocker of Tweak-XP:
  • Tweak-XP comes with a predefined list of internet advertisement servers from which it will block ads. This list is shown in the listbox which you will find on the Ad-Blocker page of Tweak-XP.
  • To activate the ad-blocker, simply check the 'Activate Ad-Blocker' check box.
     ATTENTION: the activation of the internet ad-blocker either requires that you do restart Windows XP or close and restart all internet applications currently running on your machine.
  • When Tweak-XP finds an ad, it will block it and display this graphic instead of the banner ad:

In case you will find an ad which is not blocked by Tweak-XP, that specific ad server is probably not included to the server list. You can then add the new server manually:

  • Hold the mouse over the ad which is not blocked, right click the ad with your mouse and choose 'Copy Link' or a similar command.
  • Focus the server text field of Tweak-XP and right click it - choose 'Paste'. The inserted link might look like this:

http://ad.de.doubleclick.net/click;2900279;0-0;0;5....... etc. etc.

Remove the 'http://' and the rest of the link up from the next slash (/). The link should now look like the following:

ad.de.doubleclick.net

Attention: you MUST enter a new server in exactly this format (as displayed in the server listbox).

If you want to remove a server from the server list, select the server you want to remove and click the 'Remove server from list' button.

  • How to backup your list of Ad Servers: the list of ad-servers Tweak-XP uses to identify Banner Ads is saved in one single file called 'hosts.svr'. This file can be found in the Tweak-XP installation directory. You can create a backup of that file to ensue that you do not loose the ad-server addresses you've added to the list.

Please remember: the activation of the internet ad-blocker either requires that you do restart Windows XP or close and restart all internet applications currently running on your machine.

Known problems:

  • The Ad Blocker of Tweak-XP seems not to work on Windows XP systems where ZoneAlarm is installed. This is defininetely caused by ZoneAlarm, since the AdBlocker works perfect with Symantecs Norton Personal Firewall installed.
  • If Windows XP crashes or the AdBlocker was not closed or deactivated correctly, Bannder-Ads might still be blocked and a 'Page cannot be displayed' message might appear within Internet Explorer. In that case do this: Start the Windows Explorer and delete the file 'hosts' which can be found in the

    C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC

    folder. This will reset the AdBlocker.