Recently developed a problem with MyPal78.0.2 browser, and the culprit seems to be Supermium. Due to those few web sites that would no longer load, I decided to try out Supermium, so I downloaded the "supermium_144_32_nonsetup.zip" file. It contains no ReadMe or other instruction, and Github is not the easiest place for me to find what I'm looking for, so I assumed by the name that this was a "portable" version of the browser. I was wrong. There is a Setup.exe file in the archive.... not sure why.
So I extracted the contents into a new directory, and ran the Chrome.exe executable. Then I spent about 30 minutes or so with it doing the normal configuration stuff. I checked the Doc's&Settings directory along the way and noted that Supermium was NOT a portable browser as it had created a new directory for it's profile. After that first session, the browser opened very quick, and loaded a couple of those problem pages MyPal didn't want to, so I was happy with that. Eventually, I shut it back down and went back to my main browser which is the MyPal78.0.2.
It didn't take long to notice some new issues of sites loading slowly. My news sites that formerly had embedded video now had only black boxes instead, and the biggest issue for me was the map rendering seems now to be completely broken. I use maps a lot, and my favorite for some time has been the DuckDuckGo maps. I would just type in an address or country followed by "map" on the search bar, then click on the first choice of maps resulting from that search, and the browser gave me a very detailed and responsive interactive map.
I would end up at a URL like "
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hawaii+map&t=ffnt&iaxm=maps&source=maps" (hawaii might be anything else).
Now however, the page gives me the left pane sidebar, but the map itself never loads. When Task Mgr. is running it shows the CPU spiked at 100% for as long as I allow the page to attempt loading (up to 3 minutes once). When I eventually close that tab, the CPU remains spiked for sometimes another 30 seconds before dropping back down to it's normal condition.
Then I tried opening the same map URL in 360Chrome and found that this browser had also been affected. The map eventually did load, but it took 3 or 4 times as long. When it finally was up, panning and zooming was so sluggish it was an annoying and useless way to do anything. So then I wondered could DDG have made some sort of changes to their search/map rendering recently? Then I went to my Dell laptop also running WinXP SP3 with identical browsers. The map URL loaded fast and normal on both browsers on that machine. Obviously I thought, Supermium had made some sort of change to the system that's affecting all the other browsers, and who knows what else!
At this point I decided to get rid of Supermium. Even though it did what I wanted, the trade off wasn't worth it for me, so I first tried running the Uninstall.exe. It reported something like "No formal setup found". Next I looked for Supermium in "Add/Remove Programs" and found none (as expected), deleted the Supermium directories, and looked for any entries in the Registry. There were only 3 that Windows created pointing to the D/L archive file in the Downloads directory. Then rebooted and tried the other browsers again...... no joy.
I never bothered backing up the 360Chrome files cuz I really don't like Chrome in the first place, but I had backed up MyPal right b4 I even started playing with Supermium. So I replaced both of the config directories, and the main program from my backups. Still same behavior. Then I try deleting site specific cookies and cache, and eventually ALL cookies and cache. No affect. Next I delete everything MyPal again, and do a fresh install with virgin profile directories. The new install still won't load that map URL.
Now I'm getting a bit frustrated, so I delete all the MyPal directories again, and run the Windows Restore taking the system back to 3 days b4 I even D/L that damn Supermium file! On restart I ran CCleaner to check the Registry... it only found half a dozen unrelated file extensions. So now I do another fresh install of MyPal, and it still won't deal with that DDG map. Along the way I had discovered that by signing into YouTube (Google) account, the news sites suddenly displayed embedded videos correctly again, but nothing so far has resolved the DDG mapping.
I've looked at the Services running, and don't see any odd-balls. At one point I even did the F8 "Last config that worked" for the hell of it. Now I'm contemplating something really insane, which would be to run the damn Supermium Setup.exe, and then the Uninstall.exe to see if that removes what ever this program did to my system.
Got any better ideas?