Since last weekend, I have not been able to access FTE from my home computer. First I thought the site was down, but when I got to work Monday, I found it works fine from my work computer.

When I try to open the site, it shows that the site is loading, and then it displays "done" at the bottom taskbar, but the screen is blank. I don't get a popup from my spam blocker, or any error message of any kind. I am using Firefox, but the same thing happens in IE. I haven't made any software changes lately.

I remember this happening once before, and someone on the forum posted the solution. I think it had something to do with a proxy setting, but I don't remember exactly what I did to fix it.

Can someone help me out?

(Moderator, if this post is inappropriate for this forum, please move it.)

 

Are you using a proxy server? I run through a proxy server on my Linux box for AdZapper (to block ads and speed up browsing) and for an extra layer of antivirus filtering. Anyway, I was using the popular squid Proxy server and I had similar difficulties with different sites.

What I ended up doing was clearing the proxy server's cache, which worked but was a brute force approach (what do I know, I'm still learning). But ultimately what I ended up doing was running IE direct, disabling the proxy settings there, and then kept Firefox running through the proxy server.

So I pretty much use Firefox all of the time and only used the MS IE for websites that don''t work well with Squid.

So you might try choosing one of your browsers, disable the proxy settings there, clear your cache, and see how it goes.

EDIT: Ok, I missed the obvious. You can even bypass the proxy server for specific sites. In example, using IE 8, that's under Tools, Internet Options, under the Connections tab, hit the LAN settings button, then hit the Advanced button and you'll see an Exceptions text box that allows you to add exception addresses to your proxy settings. Of course, I've never tried that before and I'm not in a position to test it.

Hope that helps

 

Just out of coincedence, the new Adobe upgrade is out. Something in the back of my memory is telling me there was a flash player glitch (or some such foolishness) with the site the last time this all happened. The Player was slow to digest the advertising and was timing out.

Done any upgrades lately?

 

I think you may be onto something, Julie. I have been getting frequent reminders to update my Adobe flash player lately, but I whenever I try to download the upgrade, it is unsuccessful. I'll give it another shot when I get home tonight and post my results.

FTE is the only site (so far) that is failing to load.

 

Just a historical thought.

The computer guys or "IB Adrian" will have better advice!

 

I'm not a computer guru but I've had my share of problems that I've been able to stumble around and fix. The last problem I had was seeing images hosted on Photobucket. I couldn't see these images on any site, here and on the HAMB, or any other site. I couldn't log into their site, I'd get a "not connected", or similar, window. I later found I couldn't log onto my bank's web site either, I'd get the same message. I found I had to flush my computer's DNS, it has some thing to do with the computer reconizing the ISP, or something. I found an easy way of doing by going to the "Start" button on the bottom left corner, then clicking on "Control Panel", then "Network Connectiion", then "Local Area Connection", then "Local Area Connection", then "Support", and then finally "Repair". I don't know how it works but it works for me. I us IE and kind of stumbled on this fix. I did it about a dozen times and now I don't seem to have the problem.

 

I did the Adobe Acrobat update yesterday morning at work with my company laptop, and hardly any websites have worked properly since. Tried reloading Java, helped a little.

 

Well, I sat down at the home computer this evening, and launched FTE without a problem. I didn't do a thing to fix it, either. Hopefully it will keep working.

Go figure.

Thanks for all of your helpful suggestions.

 

Sometimes they do upgrades here and while they are workin gon the site it slows stuff down. They actually pulled the site down on the 10th I believe.

But yes, as Ross mentioned the last problem like this - with the Adobe - had some JAVA in there too.

It's all coming back to me - oh the horror!