AOL problems connecting to SOG sites
 

For the past couple of months I, and others using AOL, have had a great deal of difficulty accessing Stroke of Genius related sites.

Today through a friend at the Kennedy Space Center, I was able to speak directly with AOL with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope. The following solution was offered to me:

From Windows desktop (I run XP) with all applications shut down -

* at the bottom right corner of the screen is a small AOL icon, right click.

* from the next window select "system information."

* from the next selection of folders select "utilities" at the top.

* from the middle of the next screen you will see "AOL ADAPTER."

* click the button which reads "UN-INSTALL ADAPTER."

* exit back to desk top and restart your computer.

When I tried to get an explanation as to what I had just done the lady could not make me understand. It may have something to do with the fact that she was speaking Farsi.

Anyway, I restarted my computer and successfully pulled up SOG. I'm still not fully convinced because the problem was always intermittent. Time will tell.

Mike,

I have experienced the same problem with my Windows XP recently. I will do the same and let you know what happens.

Thanks for the info!

I'm on Windows XP, too, but have had no problems to report.

Michele,

The problem seems to be with AOL and not Windows.

My experience yesterday afternoon would indicated that the above fix did not work.

I've communicated once again to my hosting company, St. Louis Internet. He has contacted AOL and writes the following. As I've suggested before, a call to their customer service number is what should be done. Anything you don't know how to do below, they can step you through. My host says:

I don't suppose this has anything to do with anything, but, I have seen this name "St. Louis Internet" before. When this all started weeks ago, I would click on SOG and "St. Louis Internet" home page (somewhat garbled) would come up. Within each link (maybe a half dozen) on their home page you would read: "www.portraitartist.com." If you clicked one of them it would go to "Web site not found." At the time I had no idea who they were. I have not seen the St. Louis Internet site in several weeks.

For the past few weeks (all this now being intermittent) when you click the forum it just goes to "Web site not found." If you try and go to the SOG home page, about half the time it will go to "Web site not found" the other half the time it will load the page (with the exception of the refreshable image at the top) but every SOG link from that page will go to "Web site not found."

This all happens while every other aspect of my computer works fine and any other link I persue works fine.

The one miracle moment that I was able to speak to AOL generated the fix which started this thread.

Mike, I am curious how you usually access SOG. Do you type portraitartist.com in your address bar, do you have a bookmark set up, or what are you referring to when you say "click on SOG"?

I too have XP, but not AOL. Several weeks ago, I typed in portraitartist.com and some other site came up that was clearly not SOG (though I don't recall seeing "St. Louis"). It wouldn't go away until I cleared out my cache, shut down and restarted my IE and refreshed. Haven't seen it since. I am wondering if the site set a bookmark or cookie on your system in AOL that keeps trying to redirect you to the fake site and stays until you clear out your cache again. Weird.

Heidi,

I was hoping that you would show up. I use AOL for everything, I have a "favorites" section that holds all of the sites which I routinely visit. Within this section I have saved the SOG forum. So I pull down my favorite list and "click" on SOG forum, which is of course http://forum.portraitartist.com/.

During the course of the day I probably visit the forum a half dozen times. My success in actually getting in is not predictable in any way. A few days ago I went about two and a half days with complete success but then it went back to hit and mis.

From what I can tell it is specific to AOL, I know that Chris S. and Stephen S. have had similar troubles. I have AOL clients that have never been to the forum (I hope) but have had trouble getting to my SOG web site.

Seems this has been going on a while - before the upgrade. Can you think of anything else that was changed on your system around the time you started experiencing this problem? Did AOL release an upgrade that you installed? Did you install a pop up blocker? Did AOL install a pop up blocker? When you say you click on links and get the ol "Page cannot be found" error, that makes me wonder if a pop up blocker is preventing a new browser window from opening (either nothing happens or you get that error when clicking on a pop up link). That would explain why sometimes you can get in and other times you can't - depending on if you already have a browser window open. If you are trying to open from a favorites bookmark, you already have a window open and the new one may be getting blocked.

If you are using a pop up blocker, you should be able to set in the options to allow all pop ups from the SOG site, or add http://forum.portraitartist.com to the pop up blocker's Allow List. Either that, or you can temporarily disable it while visiting SOG.
If that is not the problem, I am stumped.

Actually there are two ways that I access SOG, first is the way I described above, second is when I get an e-mail notification from a forum thread that I have subscribed to. In this case I will copy the url and past it into the long AOL window (tech term) at the top and hit "go."

My best guess is that this started about six weeks ago. In this general time frame I have installed the new version of AOL 9.0 (the superbowl ad convinced me). I cannot link this event to any of these woes.

I have installed, and frequently run, Adaware 6.0 which rids my computer of spyware.

I have set in my AOL controls to block all popups. I do not have any independent blocker installed.

I have set my security settings to low, and specified "portraitartist" as an "always allow."

I do from time to time delete my temporary internet files.

I'm not sure if I have the ability to use DOS to trace a path. If I do, I don't know how to use it.

The curious thing to me is that whatever I, AOL, or some hideous hacking monster is doing, it only affects SOG related sites. And it's not just for me but for others as well.

I just heard again from my ISP this morning and he writes the following:

Cynthia,

That is wonderful news. Lets hope they solve the puzzle.

Mike,

Oops, I started to post before I read Cyntha's latest reply. Hopefully, that will take care of the problem. It explains the St. Louis page you have been seeing.

If not, it still could be a pop up issue - or perhaps a combination of several issues?

Those security settings you mention to allways allow are to always allow cookies from portraitartist.com, not to always allow pop ups. Especially if AOL has a pop up control and you have it set to block all pop ups. Pop ups are not just advertisements - they are pop up windows to allow a second browser window to open up - such as when you click on an artists name in the portraitartist.com site, their site will open up in a pop up window. If not allowed, you will just get a page can't be displayed error.

My isp ended up signing up for AOL to solve the problem, even though he was under no obligation to do so. The communications, starting with the oldest.

From AOL: From St. Louis Internet: From St. Louis Internet:

Up until yesterday I would have said that my success percentage had gone up to 70+ %. Today I have been locked out most of the day.

Once I am logged on to AOL I will either be able to access SOG or I won't. No matter how many attempts I make. The determining factor seems to be at the point of logging in. It would seem that when you log on you are assigned to one of AOL's many servers and you are with that server for the remainder of your session. Some servers are bogus and some aren't.

It's as if they are making modifications very slowly, thus the increased success percentage. I really don't know much about what goes on behind the scenes but this is the way it appears to me.

PS: I'm getting no response from SpelChek.

No luck here, either, with AOL. Cable or dial-up, doesn't matter. I read the email notifications and then go in through Explorer to get to the Forum, but the hassle limits my visits.

Looking into an ISP switch, though it is daunting, as the AOL email address is "out there" in a LOT of places, especially since the family uses all seven screen names, extensively.

Hazardous as a Forum software upgrade.

One day the ISP's will have to let us switch but keep our email addresses, like switching cell phone services and keeping our old number. Wouldn't that be nice....

I have suggested before and I'll say it again, please call AOL and insist that there is a problem and that you know it is AOL because it's been verified with the hosting ISP in conjuction with AOL. Tell them the problem has been somewhat resolved by actions taken by AOL, but not totally.

I post these updates here just for information purposes and to verify that I am not alone in my suffering. I don't mean them to be a complaint against SOG.

I'm convinced that if this problem is resolved it will come from no action taken by me. I have for the past month tried to communicate with AOL on line, by phone and through e-mail. I have become so frustrated that I have threatened them never to contact me again.

I don't have the biggest dog in this hunt. I do, however, try and figure things out based on the very limited amount of information that I am able to muster. I still cannot manuver around the fact that only one site produces these results. It would suggest to me that AOL would have unique code to deal with each site which it tries to access. This part makes no sense to me.

Every web site has a unique IP address and if that IP address is coded wrong in one or more of their name servers, it would affect just that one site.

I had a situation once when I was in St. Louis where I couldn't access my web site, but I could access everything else. Everyone else could outside St. Louis. It was a problem with a name server somewhere along the hops taken to get to the site and it had absolutely nothing to do with St. Louis Internet.

The toughest part of the puzzle is that the trouble is intermittent. I can have two or three hours of access with no trouble at all, followed by two or three of being blocked ("Can't find web site" is a common message").

But I also have a variable that throws a wrench in the gears -- a dodgy cable modem service provider. So I never know what part of the works is gummed up.

I also have a 12-gauge shotgun that could probably fix this computer overnight.

I've just upgraded(?) to the "AOL 9.0 Security" version. Before, the problem of accessing the SOG sites was intermittent. I could log off and back on again (it might take 2-4 times) and I could finally gain access.

Since my upgrade this morning I have not been able to gain access to any SOG sites through AOL, no matter how many times I log off and on.

Don't know where you're at on this by now, but I can report that I've had access problems to the Forum for about 2 weeks when trying to come in through AOL. (I have an alternate cable/ethernet connection through Explorer, which is what I had to use on this visit.)

The history strongly suggests that this is an AOL bug, despite predicted denials and diversions from the provider.

I now have a cable connection, nothing out of the ordinary. As I said above, my success used to be intermittent, but I am now completely shut out. I'm using the Internet Explorer for this access.

It all went black when I upgraded to their new "AOL 9.0 Security" software. This included the McAfee virus scan software that I did not have. I was recently able to speak by phone (the on-line help is a joke) to a tech support person. He concluded that he could not find the site either and he would fill out a report.

I'm no wizard on the technical side, I don't want to be. I'm sure there is a switch thrown somewhere that has caused this blackout. If I could find the switch then I could go back to being intermittent. I think this is a separate issue from the intermittent problem that has been there for at least a year.

For me this is just an inconvenience, but for any other AOL user reading my business card and trying to access my site ... well, I can almost hear my card as it hits the bottom of the can.

When you are unable to get to SOG with the URL of http://www.portraitartist.com, have you then tried http://199.217.241.56 as I've suggested earlier? It should come up, which would be proof that the problem is with their name servers and caching procedures. If you have not done this, please do so and tell me what happens. But, the fact is, in conversations between my host company and AOL, AOL has admitted it is their problem.

When you have the problem, see if you also have the problem with the following sites. Please report the results.

http://www.asopa.com
http://www.leonloard.com
http://www.st-louis.net
http://www.autotire.com
http://www.newground.com
http://www.meltonmachine.com

I signed up for the free month with AOL and unfortunately encountered the problem only one time and was unsuccessful in getting help from tech support because I kept being disconnected during each online support session and when I got disgusted and finally signed off and then back on, the problem was no longer there.

Cynthia,

I just tried this: http://199.217.241.56, as you suggested.

What I got was the SOG home page. However, as I have seen many times before, it is mostly a shell. The rotating (refreshed) image at the top never loads (x) and many (not all) of the images throughout the page do not load.

I cannot successfully link from anything on the page with some exceptions. For example, the Connie Erickson link, which is an SOG hosted site, will not come up. However, the Marvin Mattleson link, which is independently hosted will come up. With these type of exceptions, everything else indicates website not found. If I try to go to "competitions," it says website not found, "forum," it says website not found.

Also, when I first initiated this: http://199.217.241.56, it took about 60 seconds to load the home page that I described above.

Also, the other two sites that you suggested came back website not found.

Mike,

You beat me to some changes I made to my post above - I added in some other sites.

Cynthia,

None of them worked. I think you are doing what I have always been curious about.

Thanks, Mike. I'm not sure what it means, but I'm communicating with St. Louis Internet.

Mike, you're on a Mac aren't you?

Nope. Windows XP, AOL 9.0 Security (newest)

Mike,

Those other sites listed above. Could you please confirm that you are able to bring them up using Internet Explorer, even tho you couldn't get them in AOL.

St. Louis Internet's Greg Chatten just signed up for AOL and had no problem getting to the site. :(

So, does this mean that all my clients and prospective clients who use AOL would have a problem when they tried to access my SOG site?

I just did a 2,000 piece mailing and a good portion of those people will be using AOL. I hope this doesn't mean that, if any of them should be interested in commissioning me and try to pull up my website to look at, that they'd be unable to do so.

Not necessarily. You posted at the same time as me, so you didn't see in my post just prior where I said that Greg Chatten, owner of St. Louis Internet where my sites are hosted, signed up for AOL and he had no problems with accessing Stroke of Genius. A few months ago, I also signed up for their 30 day free trial and during 30 days, only once did I have a problem accessing the site.

Rest assured, this is not a problem with the hosting company - it lies either with AOL or a route along the way.

Just to add my experience:

I've just tried both the usual URL and the numeric alternative. Neither accessed SOG through AOL (the browser for which is Mozilla, I believe), but both did so through Internet Explorer.

And one for the road:

While on through Explorer, I successfully accessed all sites in the "asopa et al" list. Then I went to AOL and was able to do the same . . . AND when I tried SOG through AOL, it was able to get there (having refused to do so -- "Website not found" -- only a few minutes ago.)

I suspect a squirrel.

Cynthia,

I just tried each of the sites you listed above using Internet Explorer and each came up straight away.

Mike,

Try the following in AOL and then in IE and please report the results:

www.johnhowardsanden.com
www.jhsanden.com
www.danielgreeneartist.com
www.portraitinstitute.com
www.portraitclubs.com

Interestingly, St. Louis Internet hosts the site for newground.com, but does not provide the DNS service for them. Based on that, I'm beginning to suspect it's a routing problem as opposed to DNS problem.

All were unsuccessful in AOL. All were successful through the Internet Explorer.

This was found on a website and perhaps sheds a bit of light, but not a solution: http://www.digitalpoint.com/lists/19237.html