The security freaks have locked down my workstation to a point where I can't do my job! I tried ff portable live from a cd but got an alert box with an "application metering" message stating that this software was blocked! Any workarounds?
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snork,
Welcome to the site
I'm sure that others will give you a couple of things you could try.
My thought is that if they are trying that hard to stop you, ie "application metering", you might want to be very careful before trying anything suggested. They may block the methods suggested, and at that point fire you.
If they really want to the Admins can always discover what you are doing and at this point that message could be interpreted as "fair warning"
Be careful,
and again, welcome
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
First of all, welcome to PortableApps.com. We're glad to have you here.
Try searching our site using the handy search button in the upper-right hand corner for something like 'rename firefox.exe' You can rename firefox.exe somehow so that it won't block it. If the 'security freaks' just blocked firefox.exe, that should work. Try that. If it doesn't work, just post here.
EDIT: Tim beat me to posting.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
by 12 minutes
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
thx. I guess I'll just have to let it go. Too bad. Without FF, I'm less efficient... oh well.
I too have the issue of FFP being blocked due to application metering but I have noticed that running Firefox.exe from the App dir works, but it doesn't use the 'portable' data, e.g. Flash 10.
Also noticed is that NotePad++ is also blocked by the same policy (it says blocked by FFP policy).
So it is just the Portable Launchers that are being blocked in my situation.
I'm wondering if we could get a bare bones launcher with barely more than the app it's intended to launch in it (so no version details or author stuff for them to match against.)
Any reply would be appreciated.
If you rename FirefoxPortable.exe, it will still work. That might get around the restriction.
Do note Tim Clark's caveat though; most administrators don't tend to like people circumventing their policies. While it may work, I don't recommend that you do it.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
I second the suggestions not to try to cheat the system. That could be bad.
Can these people be spoken to? There are a couple of reasons Firefox Portable would be blocked. You might be able to fix your problem simply by educating the people causing it, since they do hold authority over you.
The most common reason, I would think, would be that they have some way of monitoring Internet Explorer, and either they don't know how to monitor Firefox, or they suspect Firefox is somehow avoiding detection. I don't know the right terminology, but they can monitor all traffic at the server level regardless of the browser you use, unless you're using anonimizing proxies, that is - but that's an admission of guilt. For good measure, mention that Adblock Plus speeds up network access by blocking ad servers, so you don't waste time and bandwidth downloading ads.
Less common but entirely possible, their antivirus software may be flagging the launchers as dangerous. This has been reported with certain antivirus software. If they see you intentionally launching something they've got flagged as malicious, they're smart to block it. If they say it's infected, tell them it's a false positive and have them run another virus scanner on it.