Thoughts from the caffeine primed mind of Nathan Smack.

ActiveX Annoyance

| Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Several of the web based tools that I use at work require the use of Internet Explorer, and one specifically required an ActiveX plugin. Since installing that plugin, I have been getting the following ActiveX Error message:
"Could not create the control {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}. Check that it has been installed on your computer and that this page correctly reference it." This was very annoying because sites like Google Reader would spawn dozens of these pop-up messages.

I finally decided to do something about it. Most of the forums that I came across (like this one) suggested deleting the npmozax.dll file from the Mozilla Firefox installation directory. While this method was reported to have worked, there were some unanswered queries about what the possible side effects could be from just deleting the file. I decided to try simply disabling the plugin (Tools > Add-ons > Plugins). It worked, and now I don't have to even think about the possibility that some other component might fail due to a dependency on that file.

Now that the annoying pop-ups have stopped, I can continue using Firefox as my default browser. Google Chrome was a good alternative, but it is not supported by my VPN proxy, which causes problems when I am working remotely.

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