Ad Blocker

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The internet Ad Blocker

To increase your internet 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.
>>> If you do not want the ads to be replaces with the 'Blocked by Tweak-XP' image, uncheck the checkbox on the right side of the 'Blocked by Tweak-XP' image below the 'Activate Ad-Blocker' checkbox. The Ad-Blocker will remove ads from websites and not display a replacement image.
When Tweak-XP finds an ad, it will block it and display this graphic instead of the banner ad (if you've set the Ad-Blocker to display this replacement image):

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 Symantec's Norton Personal Firewall installed.
The Ad Blocker might cause some printer drivers not to work propperly. There's currently no workaround possible. If you experience problems with printing while the Ad Blocker is activated, please deactivate the Ad Blocker and retry printing.
Some Yahoo services do not work propperly when AdBlocker is enabled. To make the Yahoo services work again, please follow the instructions mentioned below.
If you do experience problems when accessing your network, please disable the AdBlocker.
If Windows XP crashes or the Ad Blocker 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.