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DaveH is back!!!


DaveH

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I have posted quite a bit in the server is busy thread about slow speeds and being thrown off connection at busy times, but this one was different.

On Saturday 10 January at about 4:30 my computer started to run really slowly on Sheffield History and eventually just locked up. I am well aware from the other thread that as the server for SH is shared with owlstalk that slow running and losing connection is a problem, particularly when the Owls are playing and just after a match.

However, this time any attempt to reconnect was just met with "Internet Explorer cannot display this page", a message normally gigen when a site is completely down. the following day the problem persisted so I tried everything I could think of to reconnect to Sheffield History

My modem and Router were rebooted many times

My firewall, spyware and pop up blockers were turned on and off and their settings analysed.

I tried my computer (XP) with IE7, Firefox3, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Seamonkey browsers.

I used my old Windows 98 computer with IE6 and Firefox2

I used my wifes Vista laptop (wirelessly) with IE7

I double booted my computer into Linux and used Konqueror, Iceweasel and Firefox3

All had the same result, none of them could connect to SH, although all could connect to just about any other site on the web (but not owlstalk)

On Monday 12 I was rather naughty and tried to connect to SH from work using an XP laptop and the works network. It could connect no problem. Baffled by this I emailed my ISP that night and phoned my friend Stuart0742 to see if he was having any problems, he wasn't and it appears neither were most other members.

For a week I had no connection to SH from home and my ISP did not reply. Stuart0742 kept in touch and did a bit of investigating into my problem with connectivity as a site administrator.

At this point I would like to thank all those administrators who were made aware of this and were working on my behalf behind the scenes - Stuart0742, SteveHB, Tsavo, RichardB and ADMIN, - hope I haven't missed anyone out.

For a week I went into work early and checked on new posts before start time but couldn't post anything in reply because I know that our Internet use is monitored, it was like being in exile.

After a week of no reply from my ISP I phoned them and a nice man at Virgin Media appears to have fixed the problem within minutes. It is a DNS server problem whereby one server cannot connect to another, the solution was to go into IE tools and set up a proxy server and port to bypass the broken connection. So far it is working after 10 days with no connection. It works on IE7 but not on Firefox or any of the others yet, and my ISP don't support most other browsers anyway.

Anyway, the whole episode has been another load of stress and hassle I could have done without. Has anyone else had similar problems?

My ISP is VirginMedia (formerly TeleWest Blueyonder) and this problem may have only affected customers using their servers.

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I have posted quite a bit in the server is busy thread about slow speeds and being thrown off connection at busy times, but this one was different.

On Saturday 10 January at about 4:30 my computer started to run really slowly on Sheffield History and eventually just locked up. I am well aware from the other thread that as the server for SH is shared with owlstalk that slow running and losing connection is a problem, particularly when the Owls are playing and just after a match.

However, this time any attempt to reconnect was just met with "Internet Explorer cannot display this page", a message normally gigen when a site is completely down. the following day the problem persisted so I tried everything I could think of to reconnect to Sheffield History

My modem and Router were rebooted many times

My firewall, spyware and pop up blockers were turned on and off and their settings analysed.

I tried my computer (XP) with IE7, Firefox3, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Seamonkey browsers.

I used my old Windows 98 computer with IE6 and Firefox2

I used my wifes Vista laptop (wirelessly) with IE7

I double booted my computer into Linux and used Konqueror, Iceweasel and Firefox3

All had the same result, none of them could connect to SH, although all could connect to just about any other site on the web (but not owlstalk)

On Monday 12 I was rather naughty and tried to connect to SH from work using an XP laptop and the works network. It could connect no problem. Baffled by this I emailed my ISP that night and phoned my friend Stuart0742 to see if he was having any problems, he wasn't and it appears neither were most other members.

For a week I had no connection to SH from home and my ISP did not reply. Stuart0742 kept in touch and did a bit of investigating into my problem with connectivity as a site administrator.

At this point I would like to thank all those administrators who were made aware of this and were working on my behalf behind the scenes - Stuart0742, SteveHB, Tsavo, RichardB and ADMIN, - hope I haven't missed anyone out.

For a week I went into work early and checked on new posts before start time but couldn't post anything in reply because I know that our Internet use is monitored, it was like being in exile.

After a week of no reply from my ISP I phoned them and a nice man at Virgin Media appears to have fixed the problem within minutes. It is a DNS server problem whereby one server cannot connect to another, the solution was to go into IE tools and set up a proxy server and port to bypass the broken connection. So far it is working after 10 days with no connection. It works on IE7 but not on Firefox or any of the others yet, and my ISP don't support most other browsers anyway.

Anyway, the whole episode has been another load of stress and hassle I could have done without. Has anyone else had similar problems?

My ISP is VirginMedia (formerly TeleWest Blueyonder) and this problem may have only affected customers using their servers.

Dave,

I use Firefox and have been having the same problem for about a month. after about 10 minutes my computers lock up and will not let me contact ANY site at all .Very annoying. I have to shut my computers down and start again..I thought it was my computers that were the problem.I will have to look into this.

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Dave,

I use Firefox and have been having the same problem for about a month. after about 10 minutes my computers lock up and will not let me contact ANY site at all .Very annoying. I have to shut my computers down and start again..I thought it was my computers that were the problem.I will have to look into this.

My XP PC running firefox 2 does exactly the same thing, don't seem to have the same thing with Firefox 3 on Windows 7

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Welcome back Dave! I've been having problems too, I'm running Firefox 3 on XP on my main pc and Firefox 3 on Vista :(<_< on my laptop. From time to time my main pc locks up and I have to reboot, but on the laptop Firefox keeps crashing and restarting. Not just on here but pretty much at random in both cases.

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Welcome back Dave! I've been having problems too, I'm running Firefox 3 on XP on my main pc and Firefox 3 on Vista :(<_< on my laptop. From time to time my main pc locks up and I have to reboot, but on the laptop Firefox keeps crashing and restarting. Not just on here but pretty much at random in both cases.

It is a common problem with Firefox crashing on Vista, probably something Microsoft built in (just being cynical), thats one of the reasons that made me go back to XP

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Welcome back Dave! I've been having problems too, I'm running Firefox 3 on XP on my main pc and Firefox 3 on Vista :(<_< on my laptop. From time to time my main pc locks up and I have to reboot, but on the laptop Firefox keeps crashing and restarting. Not just on here but pretty much at random in both cases.

To get around this proxy server problem at least on my XP computer I have now set IE7 to use no proxy, which works for just about everything except Sheffield History and I have set Firefox 3 with proxy for use mainly with Sheffield History.

I chose to use Firefox with SH due to the number of members in another thread who said how much faster Firefox seemed to be with the SH site.

So far I have had no problems using this combinations and no problems with Firefox 3 crashing or locking up, - so far so good.

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To get around this proxy server problem at least on my XP computer I have now set IE7 to use no proxy, which works for just about everything except Sheffield History and I have set Firefox 3 with proxy for use mainly with Sheffield History.

I chose to use Firefox with SH due to the number of members in another thread who said how much faster Firefox seemed to be with the SH site.

So far I have had no problems using this combinations and no problems with Firefox 3 crashing or locking up, - so far so good.

What a lucky escape!

Just nearly had the same problem again.

IE8 (now upgraded) works OK with no proxy but cannot connect to SH

Firefox 3.5 (also upgraded) works fine with proxy until this morning when it wouldn't connect at all

Got in touch with a nice helpful guy at Virgin Media who spent ages trying to help me sort it out, I was on the phone (free call) for over half an hour and we went through everything, including trying to reconnect without the need for a proxy. Nothing worked.

Finally it transpired that the proxy server webcache.blueyonder.co.uk (which I should have changed to webcache.virginmedia.com) was down and out of action.

I was quoted a number for the "outage" and a fix time to correct the problem of around 5th or 6th November.

That would have left me off the site for 6 or 7 days, or reliant on someone else's computer and independent Internet connection (not virgin media)

As luck would have it the connection has just been restored within 8 hours, - so fast that this time I am back before most of you even noticed I had gone lol

Lets hope its stays that way ;-)

Like to say a thank you to the guy on Virgin Media support helpline, - it was nice to talk to someone friendly, caring, supportive and someone who knew what he was talking about.

He also spoke very clear English, - no foreign call centres involved here. Whenever I have had to call VM I always get someone who speaks clearly but with a scouse / Liverpool accent. Presumably their call centre is somewhere on Merseyside.

When it was Telewest / Blueyonder I thought their call centre was somewhere on Attercliffe.

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Like to say a thank you to the guy on Virgin Media support helpline, - it was nice to talk to someone friendly, caring, supportive and someone who knew what he was talking about.

He also spoke very clear English, - no foreign call centres involved here. Whenever I have had to call VM I always get someone who speaks clearly but with a scouse / Liverpool accent. Presumably their call centre is somewhere on Merseyside.

That reminds me of a few years ago, when I used to order peripherals etc for work by phone. I usually got some 'Essex girl' or ;';estuary' accent, but one day I rang a different supplier and got a broad Lancashire accent. He had to pass me to a colleague who was already answering a call. I waited several minutes then the original operator came back on and said "Hasn't he answered you yet, by 'eck, I thought my mother could clack!"

Made me feel quite at home!

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Surely you're making some of these names up ? and Don't call me Shirley etc etc.

I'm not making it up Richard,

Its just that most people just take what MicroSoft or Apple offer them as a browser (IE or Safari), or take the best 3rd party browsers on offer (FireFox, Google Chrome) without considering anything else.

Now if we move away from Microsoft Windows systems and even Apple OS systems into the world of LINUX operating systems then these alternative browsers that you claim I have made up are well know.

Whats more you don't need LINUX to use them, they are open sousce (FREE) and will run under Windows or AppleOS so anyone can give them a try.

Seamonkey is an all in one Internet suite, it does web browser, email, IRchat, etc...

SeaMonkey

Iceweasel is a similar browser to Firefox but uses the Debian OS used commonly within several distributions of LINUX

IceWeasel

..and there are others, mainly for use within the LINUX OS

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I'm not making it up Richard,

Its just that most people just take what MicroSoft or Apple offer them as a browser (IE or Safari), or take the best 3rd party browsers on offer (FireFox, Google Chrome) without considering anything else.

Now if we move away from Microsoft Windows systems and even Apple OS systems into the world of LINUX operating systems then these alternative browsers that you claim I have made up are well know.

Whats more you don't need LINUX to use them, they are open sousce (FREE) and will run under Windows or AppleOS so anyone can give them a try.

Seamonkey is an all in one Internet suite, it does web browser, email, IRchat, etc...

SeaMonkey

Iceweasel is a similar browser to Firefox but uses the Debian OS used commonly within several distributions of LINUX

IceWeasel

..and there are others, mainly for use within the LINUX OS

Then there is Mozilla Namoroka 3.6 Alpha 1 test version

Namoroka

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Richard forgot to quote me on using Konqueror

Konqueror

Thing is though,

When the server is down, or there is some fault or problem on the Internet beyond your own computer

Then all of these browsers are equally as useless.

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To get around this proxy server problem at least on my XP computer I have now set IE7 to use no proxy, which works for just about everything except Sheffield History and I have set Firefox 3 with proxy for use mainly with Sheffield History.

I chose to use Firefox with SH due to the number of members in another thread who said how much faster Firefox seemed to be with the SH site.

So far I have had no problems using this combinations and no problems with Firefox 3 crashing or locking up, - so far so good.

Thanks to the new upgrade to Sheffield History and the work that admin had to do on the server last week when the entire site went offline for 12 hours this issue with proxy servers is now resolved.

It may have taken well over a year but as from yesterday I have been using Sheffield History on IE8 without a proxy server just like any other site.

Means I can now do all my browsing in one browser (currently IE8) if I want.

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