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Kill those pop-ads free, no software requiredJul 06 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Software
The Bottom Line This is a totally free way to block annoying ads without any additional software required!
I browse the web frequently, with a broadband connection at home, T-1 connection at work, and ADSL connection at hotels on the road. Lately I've become really annoyed with those pop up ads that show up when you least expect it. The concept of ads sponsored web content does not bother me. I understand that the web sites must be compensated someway for their services or information. However, the pop-ads are annoying because they slow down my web browsing in the most irritating manner. For example, I read MSNBC on a daily basis for the latest news, and whenever I hit a web page that has a pop up ad, my browser freezes for several seconds while the ad is being served up. This is very annoying on a high speed connection, and I imagine that it would be extremely frustrating with a slower dial up connection. I was doing research on how to kill those ads without using additional software, and came across a technique that was almost too good to be true. The technique I describe works for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, and 2000, along with Internet Explorer. This technique is efficient, harmless to any other settings you might have, and easy to do. I will describe my settings and then provide a url that will have instructions for other Windows operating systems. I use Windows 2000, and this setup is the same as Windows NT. Open up Windows Explorer, and navigate to the following folder: C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\Drivers\etc In that folder, right click on the file "hosts", select copy. Then right click on an blank part of the screen, and select "paste". This will back up the "hosts" file as "copy of hosts". This is an important step because you can always recover the default settings in the event you mess up. Then double click on the "hosts" file again, and select "Notepad" as the program to open this file with. In the notepad, scroll to the very bottom of the page, beneath "127.0.0.1 localhost", type in the following entry to block those annoying x10 ads: 127.0.0.1 ads.x10.com This is an example of a website that you may want to block from serving up ads to your computer. A simple explanation of this procedure is that it tells your computer that whenever a url is detected as ads.x10.com, it should look for the data in the IP address 127.0.0.1, which is your local computer. In other words, whenever MSNBC tries to serve up x10 ads, my computer looks for the ad on my own computer, and prevents the actual ad from x10 from popping up. This eases bandwith problems and speeds up your browsing. So you can enter other entries such as: 127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net (enter for next line) 127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net (enter for next line, and so on...) When you are finished, save the file and then close it. Go to your Internet Explorer settings and delete all of the Temporary Internet Files, as well as the history, close all browsers. The next time you restart internet explorer, you will notice that there are no more annoying pop ads from x10, etc... I love this solution, because it puts me in control of what ads I want to block. It also doesn't require an ad blocker software, which can take up valuable RAM resources. If you are a parent, you can use this to block inappropriate websites from your kids, provided that they are not computer experts already. The best resource that I found on the web regarding this solution was at this website: http://www.accs-net.com/hosts/index.html This site has excellent links to other resources, such as a downloadable hosts file that you can just copy to your computer to block the most common ad websites. Try this and you'll be amazed that you can finally regain control of your own browsing experience!  |
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by texas-swede
