POST DATE:5-2-02
HOWTO remove those @#&%$ advertisements from an .ASF or .ASX file

 by FIRESTORM_v1

Foreword: Ever since I first got on the Internet I have been plagued with the ever-so hideous popups and other such assaults by heartless individuals and companies, (hissing in X-10's direction) with the release of "Pop-Up" and "Pop-Under" Advertisements. As any average person that doesn't like TV commercials, this quickly became an irritant.

Now comes Streaming Media, which is a very wonderful technology. Being able to watch streaming or stored video clips from one's local Hard drive! Along with the various compression formats and such two such compression formats rise above the rest as the most widely used! These formats being what is called the ASF format (Advanced Streaming Format) and the partner format, ASX are now the most widely used compression formats available.Unfortunately, the greedy freaks, have bastardized this technology by making it easier to cram more advertisements down your throat!

But Now you can fight back! In this document, I will discuss the proper procedure to take an ASF that has a popup in it and how to properly remove it, without harming the ASF file. This document assumes the following:

  • 1:You have a basic knowledge of ASF files and Windows.
  • 2:You are running some flavor of Windows. (the method described here appears to work on all versions of Windows. if you find diffrent, please let me know)
  • 3:You have enough disk space to successfully store more than one copy of the ASF you will be working with. as well at leadt 16MB of disk space for the application.
  • 4:You have downloaded and installed Windows Media Player 7 as well as This Windows Media tools package


    If you have no clue what I am talking about, Here is a sample video by Creed. This movie, when played seems to "spawn" several windows (4 to be exact, all pointing to http://www.slashdot.org all occuring at 30 sec. intervals.). This is the "popup" effect so aptly named because they pop-up out of nowhere.

    If you're just having fun reading, then this would be a perfect "test" movie.

    STEP 1:Download the evil file

    Before you can modify the file, you must first download it. Most of the time, you can right click on the link you clicked on and click "Save As" or "Save Target As". Be sure you put it where you can remember what you did with it.

    Now that you have the file, double click it and see if those pages pop-up again. If they do, then chances are you have a good gandidate for this procedure. If not, then your bowser may be at fault.

    STEP 2:Install the WM Tools

    Download and install the Windows Media Player Tools either from here. or you can try and find it at Microsoft's website.

    STEP 3: Start the ASF Indexer

    Now that you have it installed, you need to start the ASF indexer usually located in "Start => Programs => Windows Media => Windows Media ASF indexer" It will look like this:

    This is what the ASF indexer looks like when you first start it.

    STEP 4: Open the evil ASF

    click on the "File" menu and then click on "Open". Navigate the dialog box and open your file.

    This is what the ASF indexer looks like with our "evil" movie opened.

    STEP 5: Destroy the green boxes!

    In the previous picture, I highlighted the four green boxes in the lower left corner of the indexer window. These green boxes are script tags! You need to remove these to get rid of the annoying popups. Here's how you do it: Click on the button marked "Edit Script Commands". This will open a dialog box that looks something like this:

    Click on the times of each of the entries and click "Remove" until all of the entries are removed. Click on OK to return to the Main indexer window.

    If there are still green boxes left then go back and make sure all of the entries are removed.

    After that, click on "File" and then click on "Save" or "Save As" then that's it! if you click "Save" the same file you opened will be rewritten, if you click "Save As" you have the opportunity to save it as something like "Creed-Neutered.asf"

    Have fun!
    All trademarks, copyrights, embelems, logos, media, garbage, beer, air are the respective property of whoever owns them so don't bitch at me about infringing on any of that DMCA crap. It's not my fault Microsoft is ruling with an iron fist

    Don't blame me, I run linux damnit.