Whassup with HTF? (1 Viewer)

[Rick Radford]

I've been having problems all afternoon with HTF. It loses my user id and p/w, replies get lost, screens take forever to load, etc.

Whassup?

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Bill Hunt posted over at www.thedigitalbits.com that he was moving his server. As it's currently the same hardware HTF is on I would suspect it is some temporary software-build issue.

 

[Rick Radford]

Thanks for the info, Dennis. Hope you're right!

 

[Parker Clack]

As far as I know Bill is still with us. I am not sure what you were experiencing but if it continues let me know.

Parker

 

[Rick Radford]

Parker,

I'm still having problems with HTF losing my ID and p/w. I haven't had any msgs bomb out, but just now had HTF lose my ID. I had to sign back in.

I can tell because I lose the little icons that tell me what threads I've participated in. Sure enough, I go back to the startup page and my name is no longer there.

Am I the only one noticing this? Maybe I have another problem computerwise? (but I haven't noticed this problem on other fora)

Edit: after posting the above, I've tried (now twice) to edit the post.. and the third time I was finally able to get into edit mode. The other 2 times I got the logon screen.

I updated this to mention that after posting the above, I tried to go to another HTF forum but had to sign in to THAT forum before it recognized me.

Somethings not right somewhere, but I don't know where just yet.

 

[Cees Alons]

Rick,

That's not too peculiar. You may have lost a cookie, or it expired. You have to log in again now and then.

And yes, the icons are a good indication of being logged out or not.

Cees

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Rick,

That's is most probably a cookie problem. When you log onto the system, and it "remembers" you, it does so due to a cookie on your local machine. Parker can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99.9% sure the server side has nothing to do with remembering you're logged in (I leave my account cookied as "LOGGED IN" on 3 different computers in my house).

So if it is losing track of you, it is due to a cookie problem. Have you tried reinstalling your browser (or updating to the lastest version). I know it's a rather cliche suggestion- but it has worked for me in the past.

-V

 

[Rick Radford]

Thanks for the input guys. I mainly use Opera 6.01 (recently updated to 6.01) on a W2k/sp2 with the latest MS updates.

I'll bet you're right about the cookies. I went into the preferences screen for Opera and looked for a place to delete the cookies so it would start all over, but didn't find it under preferences.

Anyone else using Opera 6.01?

I recently did some other upgrades including taking IE5.0 to IE 6.0. So who knows what's happened behind the scenes.

At least IE gives me a button I can find to delete cookies. Netscape 4.79 lets me disable or use cookies, but I didn't see where to delete them.

 

[Greg_Y]

Anyone else using Opera 6.01?

I do and I still haven't had any luck with cookies on this site. It's been like this since we upgraded to the new software. I have to login just about every time I reply to a post. Sometimes, when I click reply, it will prompt me to login, and I do. I type out my reply and hit the "submit" button. Then it asks me to login again and when I do, it says something like it doesn't know what thread I was trying to post to, so I hit back a few times, hit submit again and then it works.

There are other weird things that happen using Opera (I'm on 6.01 as well) and I've tried different checkboxes within my HTF settings and everything. Can't figure it out.

 

[Rick Radford]

Well, at least I'm not going nuts then.
I just got the latest Java d/l (1.3.1_02). I'll see if perchance that does anything positive.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/download-windows.html
I'm also starting to copy my reply into the clipboard before I post too, just to be safe.
Greg, just out of curiosity, are you finding printing problems with Opera? I find that any page that spans past one page, I lose 2 to 3 lines of print at the transition point. I've reported the bug back in 6.0.. and was hoping 6.01 would fix it. I did get a response back from Opera tech support acknowledging the bug report. For now, my fix is to post the link in IE or NN and print from there. :/
Still, I like Opera (warts and all) best of the 3 browsers I keep on my system.

 

[David Lambert]

Well, I'm having SOME login problems like Rick is mentioning, although not nearly as bad. As everyone knows, I'm constantly on HTF, so I don't think any cookies are expiring!
I use IE 5.5 both at home and at work, except when we use the 2nd computer at home (my wife tends to lurk around the HTF using it), and it's IE 5.0...no Opera or NetScape for that matter.
But, yeah, it happens a bit to me. I'll pull up HTF and start to go do my thing, and then I'll realize that all the icons are yellow and no red ones or "go to first post" links and then I realize I'm not logged in. If it helps, my bookmarks are set to take me straight to the software section. I never type in the URL or stop at the main pages. I just go straight to where I tend to yak it up the most.
Since there's nothing on that page saying "Welcome David Lambert", then I don't know I'm logged in or not except for the telltale signs I mention above. Since there's no "Not Cookied? Login Here" fields on that page, I then have to hotfoot it to the main menu to log in. OR access the User Control Panel. OR decide to post a message. It's inconvenient, actually.
Oh, well...it doesn't seem to hurt my post count!

 

[Parker Clack]

Greg:
I use Opera 6.01 and it keeps my cookie just fine. The only thing that is in the cookie on your computer is the last time you logged with your username and password.
The cookie will be called
1)yourusername @ www.hometheaterforum.com (without the spaces) for IE and placed in the cookie direcotory for the version of IE Windows that you use.
2)will be in the cookies.txt file for Netscape and look something like
Link Removed ..........
Link Removed ..........
3)I am not sure where this information is placed in the Opera browser directory.
In this file will be placed your bbuserid (the number you are assigned by the database and your bbpassword (which is encrypted). This is followed by a series of numbers that tells the database the last time you were logged in and sets the folder colors accordingly.
If the cookie that you have for the forum gets deleted or corrupted you are going to have to create a new one. I would find out where the cookie for your browser is stored and see if it is listed more than once. If it is delete all of them. Then get back into the forum and go to the User Control Panel > Edit Options and enable the Automatically login when you return to the site and disable the Browse the board with cookies. This will save a new cookie for you on your computer.
If you keep losing your cookie something is set up with your browser or PC that does not allow you to keep a cookie on your PC.
Since all this script looks for is your userid and userid password if it does not see this on your PC you are going to have to put this in each time.
Other than this I having nothing else to offer to try to fix your situations. I know that for myself using IE 6.0.2, Netscape 4.79 and 6.2 and Opera 6.0 that I have no trouble with loosing the cookie from my PC.
Parker

 

[Rick Radford]

In our FWIW dept., my last upgrade was Java. Now how THAT would figure into this is beyond me.

HOWEVER, I have not had any further problems with HTF and Opera 6.01 since the Java upgrade. Go figure.

'Course, that may change.. if so, I'll report here.

 

[Greg_Y]

Thanks Parker. I deleted every cookie under Opera. I'll let you know if that works.

I could care less if I have to login every time I post. It's a small price to pay for this forum. There are more important things in life. That's why I never bothered to bring it up before. (I also love the "travelling" cookies like Vince mentioned.) But if it works, I'll post here.

P.S. I also use a program called Cookie Pal that rejects any unknown cookies. However, *.hometheaterforum.com has always been on my accept list and I can see the cookies being accepted. Maybe it was just a matter of a corrupt cookie.

 

[Parker Clack]

Rick:

Since the cookie is generated with javascript it may be that you need the latest version of Java so that the cookie sticks. That would make the most sense.

Parker

 

[Rick Radford]

Well, the Java upgrade apparently isn't the complete solution.

When I click my bookmark for HTF, I no longer have to sign in, but just now a reply kept taking me to the login screen. I copied the reply to the clipboard just in case, and used the back key a couple of times without it correcting the problem. So I tried to reenter my ID and p/w but that lost the forum reference.. so I hit the back key a couple of times again, and this time it posted with no problem. sigh.

Think it's still cookies? If so, I located the Opera cookie location. For me, a search for "cookies" turned up cookies4.dat in my Opera folder.

I guess my next step is to go into that and delete all cookies and try HTF again. Is this a safe procedure?

************

And the same thing just happened here. Like Greg, my fix is to back out of the "No thread specified" screen, and once back to my reply screen, it will now preview or post just fine.

***********

Edit at 1:42pm EST: Now I'm back to having to sign on when I bring up HTF. Back to square one.

 

[Parker Clack]

Rick:

I am replying to your message using Opera 6.01 (I upgraded to the latest version) with no problem. I am not sure what is going on with your browser and this site.

Parker

 

[Rick Radford]

I renamed the Opera cookies file. Opera created another one. We'll see how it works out in the next day or so.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Parker Clack]

Rick:

It will be interesting to see if that fixes the problem.

Parker

 

[Rick Radford]

Parker,

Creating a new cookie file didn't fix it either. I'm stumped. (Unless there's another cookie file Opera uses.)

Sometimes I still have to log into HTF. And just now, in replying to this thread (even though I was logged in and saw the icon indicating I participated in this thread), I was still directed to the login screen when I hit the reply button.

We'll see what happens when I post!

I guess my next course of action is to browse with IE 6.0 for a while and see if I have similar problems.

I should add that my problems are much improved over what I was seeing when I first started this thread. But it's not back to normal yet.