AOL problems connecting to SOG sites

Mike McCarty · 03-10-2004, 05:51 PM

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 Dodson · 03-10-2004, 06:16 PM

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!

Michele Rushworth · 03-10-2004, 11:12 PM

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

Mike McCarty · 03-11-2004, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michele Rushworth

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.

Cynthia Daniel · 03-11-2004, 08:01 PM

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:

Quote:

There are no technical reasons or issues on my part, or those of my carriers (AT&T, VERIO & QWEST) which would prevent an AOL (or any other Internet subscriber) from reaching any website or service available to the public here.

I did call AOL corporate support an hour ago and they said they need examples from each AOL subscriber who is complaining.

usernames

traceroutes

dates

times

location (from each user, what phone # they dialed in to)

O/S platform & patch level

which browser (AOL's, Netscape, IE, etc.)

They also asked if any of these people have installed any type of "site filtering" software which would filter out their ability to get to certain sites which have been blacklisted (rightfully so or not).

They also said it's best that the AOL customer call the AOL support line directly since they will not provide me with any information if they did find a problem since we are not a customer ourselves.
The AOL technician did run a traceroute to portraitartist.com as well as bring up the site fine; which probably means nothing since it's a giant network of millions of IP's and equipment.

There's absolutely nothing more I can do on this end. Your site, and everyone elses', is up and running and has been. There are no technical issues on this end to stop anyone from visiting any customers' website.

Greg

Mike McCarty · 03-11-2004, 11:37 PM

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.

Heidi Maiers · 03-13-2004, 12:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike McCarty

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.

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.

Mike McCarty · 03-13-2004, 12:36 AM

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.

Heidi Maiers · 03-13-2004, 02:41 AM

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.

Mike McCarty · 03-13-2004, 12:07 PM

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.