I recently tried to purchase some lotto tickets online only to discover I had a problem with Shockwave player. The entries would not display only a square empty box.
I am not sure what I did but I managed to get it working but only for a short while, and then it was gone again. I thought it was a Flash player problem so I reinstalled both the Flash player and Shockwave for good measure. I went to this site http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/to test it out and discovered it still wasn't working.
The Flash was working, but Shockwave was not. I would get a small square with what looked like a puzzle piece and wording "click here to get the plugin" in the Shockwave area, or something like that.
So, I click the puzzle and get a popup window that says "get the plugin" , I click on it and it takes me to the Shockwave and Flash download page http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ .
I download it and installed it again. It seems to install properly. It opens my browser and I get a prompt for some registration info and then I get a popup message from Macromedia Shockwave saying I need to reboot to complete the installation of Shockwave Player.
So, I click the Reboot Now button and it reboots. But yet again after going to the test page, I get the same puzzle piece graphic instead of the animation that is supposed to display.
I've uninstalled and then reinstalled both shockwave and flash and even my browser. After no success I went online to try to hunt down the problem. I only found suggestions to do what I already have done. So I took a drastic measure, to restore or reinstall my system.
I use what I consider one of the best backup programs on the face of the earth, Norton Ghost, available from http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10. I have an older version than version 10, but it still works.
The problem with most backup programs is that before you can restore your system, you have to reinstall Windows, then your backup software, and then restore it from there.
To me it kind of defeats the purpose of having a backup in the first place.
As for the system restore built into Windows, well, one of the first lessons I learned from the first time I had a computer, many moons ago, was to back up my computer. The second, NEVER back up your system on your system. (I think I learned it from Microsoft :-) )
I always disable system restore on mine, and for the times I had to use it on other peoples computers, (I'm the guy everybody calls, remember), it has proven to be a waste of space and time. So, I'm not missing anything. Of course, this is just my experience.
My first computer was only a 486SX, 50mhz, with 8mb RAM, Win3.1 and MS-DOS 6.22. It was a IBM model, that allowed me to make a series of rescue/setup disks through the built in BIOS utitlities. I also had made a Windows starup disk and I got in the habit early of backing up my data on floppys. I didn't have a burner at the time (not even sure they existed then), I didn't even have a CDROM or mouse. I had to learn how to use a computer without a mouse until I could afford to buy one.
It was a second hand computer that I bought, and it lasted only 6 months, my hard drive controller crapped out on me according to all the error messages I was getting. So, I lost everything (back then I didn't have the internet or any backup utilities other than what I have already mentioned.) It was also my first experience with a computer.
I think there is a lesson in there somewhere, anyway, back to the subject at hand, restoring my system did not solve the problem. So again I went online.
This time I managed to come across some information and a solution that to date, is still working.
To make shockwave work with any other browser except Internet Explorer, for some reson it works no problem with IE, (makes you wonder who else Miscrosoft has their claws into) just set it to work in 'Compatibility' mode.
I check it every now and then just to make sure its still working and the compatibility mode doesn't seem to interfer with my web browsing otherwise. Not yet anyway. :-) And remember those online lotto tickets I mentioned, I won $5.