Some very interesting and hopefully constructive feedback this morning!
Grouchyotaku, I appreciate your specificity in responding this go around. Regarding 'ipconfig/flushdns', I can assure you that I have done that more times than I recall throughout the past week. As for 'connection throttling', I did a bit of research on all that last night and even ran a number of diagnostic programs to determine whether or not that might've been the case. All diagnostics came up clear. My ISP is Time Warner Brighthouse Roadrunner. I've been subscribed to their cable internet service for about twelve years now and, in all that time, I've barely ever had any problems with them whatsoever. Pretty darned sure that 'connection throttling' is not at issue here.
Aamche, you brought up some interesting points that have flitted about in my mind over this past week. Failure to connect at the network server level, on Cryptic/PWE's end, has likely been my chief culprit in all this. And I completely agree with your take on this problem having little, if anything to do with our respective ISPs. With regard to the possibility of an 'IP block', at our end: I don't have a router at all, as my desktop PC's ethernet card is directly connected to my cable modem. I have, however, both completely powered down and unplugged my cable modem and run 'ipconfig/release', 'ipconfig/renew' and 'ipconfig/flushdns' several times throughout the past week.
Captainepi, thanks for your wonderfully thorough analysis! Your detailed explanation of the nature of DNS servers has shed some light on theories that have been nagging at me throughout the past week. And thank you ever so much for giving us Cryptic's phone number! I do have unlimited long distance calling and I'll most definitely be giving them a call in a little over two hours!
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
DNS servers resolve the alpha-numeric name of an address into it's numeric IP. For example, it is what converts 'www.crypticstudios.com' into 208.95.185.46. When you first go to such an address, your computer checks to see if it knows what that address resolves to. If it does, no lookup is necessary. Otherwise, it then passes the request on to your ISP's DNS server, which does the same -- if it knows it, it tells it to your machine, and the process ends there. If it doesn't know what it is, your ISP's dns server reaches out and grabs it from the authoritative DNS server (NS1.crypticstudios.com and NS2.crypticstudios.com) on file for the domain address you're looking up.
When you register a domain name, you also have the ability to set the DNS record for the domain. Inside that record is a DNS EXPIRE setting. This variable is key here. It basically tells the entire DNS lookup-system how long to wait before attempting another lookup on the authoritative server. And your internet provider's DNS server will wait that long before it resends the query to the authoritative server to freshen-up the numeric IP associated with that domain name. Most places set that at 6 to 12 hours, and sometimes even 24 hours. It just depends.
The purpose of the DNS EXPIRE setting is that it tells the your local DNS server, once its looked up a entry for the URL in question, how long it can cache the entry, and thus avoid additional look-up calls and reduce the load on the authoritative DNS server. If the issue was being caused by out of date information being cached, then the problem would automatically resolve itself once the caching period expires and the local DNS server fetches a updated entry record... Even the case of using a DNS round-robin scheme is still subject to the DNS cache expire, (though it would be game of Russian Roulette when updating a new record entry if there's a dead IP address in the configuration)
However, most of you who are suffering from connection issues has had these problems longer then one or two days, which implies there is more then a simple IP address change going on here...
However, most of you who are suffering from connection issues has had these problems longer then one or two days, which implies there is more then a simple IP address change going on here...
Here's the rub with that apparent IP address change though. Before I even attempted to login to STO again, after my last successful login (on 8/12), I first noticed that when I attempted to connect to this Forum, via Chrome, the connection would fail. I ran a Google search for this forum and while that link also failed to connect, Google did provide me with access to a cached version of this Forum. I clicked on one of the Forum threads (through the cached version) and, on a whim, tried the login link there. And it logged me in to this Forum! I then replaced my Chrome bookmark, with the new address (which I also noticed had changed).
Since all that happened, sometime mid-last week (either Tuesday or Wednesday before last), I have been unable to connect to STO's launcher login/patch updater at all.
It seems to me as though Cryptic/PWE changed their IP address for this forum, as even the link found via Google search failed to connect (though oddly I gained access via the Google cached version of this Forum). Everything seems to indicate that a similar IP address change occurred for STO's patchserver site as well. Yet, some have been able to connect, while those of us here haven't been able to connect at all. It's as though we've been shut down, like the U.S.S. Saratoga in 'Star Trek IV' by that whale probe.
And after having obsessively tried to solve this problem for the past week now, I most definitely feel like I've been 'probed'!:P
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Replaced router and got a newer model from my isp, still the same, disabled account guard, still the same.
It cant be the machine as I did everything from a freshly formatted windows with nothing but my internet security and star trek online, with all the sto exe's allowed full access. All the drivers are current and up to date. I've tried the compatibility modes and nothing.
It gets to the cogent.b06 router then the packets just stop at cryptics systems.
If you guys have any other ideas I have no issues formatting my laptop again as a testbed, only takes an hour i saved the downloaded torrent file of sto to a memory stick so i dont have a long time to download things on it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Original Join Date May 2009 - Real 1000 Day Veteran
since the patch yesterday, i have the same issue like you guys.
started the game yesterday, logged in fine, server said: doing maintenance right now.
so i went on doing some other things till the sheduled downtime had to be over (at last on my clock). so i started the game again, downloaded and installed the patch just fine and logged into the game. the server said: doing maintenance right now.
i was suprised since it was around 8 o?clock local time (utc +1) and the maintenance should have been long over by now (or i miscalculated time zones... like chief o?brian, i?m not very fond of temporal mechanics ), so i just tried again. guess what?
i got the "please be patient error"...
i started to read this forum, in fact i have nearly read every entry or most of it and tried connecting every now and than... i was getting really frustrated when i saw, some of you had this issue for a long time now...
when i came home from work today, i just thought to give it another try, no success. read the new forum entries... made a tracert to the patchserver:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Routenverfolgung zu patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41] ?ber maximal
30 Abschnitte:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms alice.box [192.168.1.1]
2 22 ms 28 ms 22 ms rdsl-gtng-de02.nw.mediaways.net [213.20.59.11]
3 21 ms 23 ms 21 ms xmws-gtng-de02-chan-18.nw.mediaways.net [195.71.
42.37]
4 25 ms 21 ms 20 ms rmws-gtng-de01-chan-1-0.nw.mediaways.net [217.18
8.59.66]
5 23 ms 24 ms 24 ms rmwc-gtso-de02-ge-0-3-1-0.nw.mediaways.net [195.
71.97.193]
6 27 ms 32 ms 28 ms rmwc-dsdf-de01-xe-1-1-0-0.nw.mediaways.net [195.
71.242.209]
7 55 ms 28 ms 28 ms Xe7-0-3-0-grtdusix1.red.telefonica-wholesale.net
[84.16.7.229]
8 39 ms 40 ms 39 ms Xe1-0-0-0-grtlontl1.red.telefonica-wholesale.net
[94.142.120.238]
9 68 ms 84 ms 200 ms 195.50.90.129
10 45 ms 40 ms 39 ms ae-21-52.car1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.98]
11 40 ms 39 ms 40 ms sl-crs1-lon-.sprintlink.net [213.206.131.21]
12 121 ms 127 ms 121 ms sl-crs2-nyc-0-5-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.16
4]
13 122 ms 128 ms 127 ms sl-crs2-spr-0-0-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.25.2
3]
14 140 ms 139 ms 135 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]
15 119 ms 119 ms 119 ms 208.30.215.82
16 118 ms 124 ms 119 ms border11.te7-1-bbnet1.bsn.pnap.net [63.251.128.4
1]
17 121 ms 123 ms 124 ms cryptic-3.border11.bsn.pnap.net [216.52.61.78]
18 126 ms 118 ms 120 ms 208.95.185.41
Ablaufverfolgung beendet.
C:\Users\vel>
these looked really fine to me... so i decided to "join the club" and tell you all my system specs and isp and so on...
just when i wanted to quote the "please be patient" message, i started sto again aaand... the bloody thing connected!!!
i am absolutely and totally at a loss here... between the first unsuccessfull try today and the successful try were around 20 minutes... i did nothing except for the tracert.. NOTHING!
so, for my specs:
i am coneccted to ALICE DSL which is part of o2 germany, i think...
this is also where i am located, germany...
system specs are:
- Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 (and all other available patches installed)
- AMD Phenom 9600 CPU
- ATI Radeon HD 5700
as for network adapters:
i am using an Atheros AR5006X to connect to a wrt45gl running ddwrt which is connected to the frackin alice dsl modem thingi :mad:
further installed adapters on my system are a VirtualBox Host-Only Adapter and an OpenVPN TAP-Adapter.
I am currently logged into the game and running around on Memory Alpha...
Hope i can reconnect, once i leave the game
i keep you informed, whether i can connect from now on or not...
If I am to do another uninstall of STO, before reinstalling, how might you suggest that I make sure that any and all references to STO get deleted from my registry?
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Okay guys and gals, I've got some potentially promising news. This morning, in response to PWE Tech's last email, suggesting changing DNS addresses, I politely but firmly told them that not only did their solution not work, but other proposed solutions haven't worked either (I even summarized two other failed PWE solutions that Bannon3 had posted in this thread). Also told them that a good many of us here suspect this problem is being caused by Cryptic/PWE's servers, rather than our ISP's or our respective computers.
I further suggested that I suspected that they weren't reading our complaint messages at all, as we've all clearly received form letters in response. Given that, I stated that it seemed evident that whoever I was communicating with is likely incapable of dealing with this problem properly and I firmly requested that this problem be bumped up the PWE Tech Support ladder, to a Department or person that can rectify this issue.
This is what I got in response, from PWE:
"Response Via Email (GM) 08/24/2012 10:23 AM
Hello ,
We apologize that the problem is persisting and if you feel that the possible solutions provided are not helpful. The connection issue you're experiencing has been escalated for further review, however, we don't have an estimate on when it may be resolved. We'll update you with more details once we have further information. Thank you for your continued patience.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment"
Like I said, somewhat promising...though I'm not about to hold my breath. That "we don't have an estimate on when it may be resolved" bit doesn't sound too encouraging. Yet, at least they're now stating that they've bumped this problem up the ladder.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Methos, did you call that number? If so what happened you never updated.
I was going to do the same thing, start a new ticket reference my support and say I demand to speak to a supervisor or someone in charge there, however their hours are Mon-Fri, so it would be ignored over the weekend. I will wait till Mon, how can a 24/7 game only have support 5 days a week for 10 hrs a day or something?
Methos, did you call that number? If so what happened you never updated.
No Bannon3, I haven't called that Cryptic phone number as yet. Honestly not sure of what good it might do really. From everything I've gathered about this problem, it's happened repeatedly since sometime in 2010, across a spectrum of PWE's online games. Pretty much the exact same login/patch updater problem, periodically effecting PWE games, usually after a new patch has been issued or shortly before then. Yet, I don't think that all of PWE's games are also Cryptic games, are they?
Hence, I'm not sure what calling Cryptic might do to help. Yet, if anyone else wants to call 'em, per Captainepi, that number is 408-399-1969.
I was going to do the same thing, start a new ticket reference my support and say I demand to speak to a supervisor or someone in charge there, however their hours are Mon-Fri, so it would be ignored over the weekend. I will wait till Mon, how can a 24/7 game only have support 5 days a week for 10 hrs a day or something?
Yeah, that's why I made sure to email them early this morning, before they opened up, while waiting for my pal to call for the last round of system settings comparison. With any luck, someone at a higher level is already working on the problem and it'll get resolved by the end of their workday. Again, not holding my breath on that one.
By the way, system settings comparison with my friend didn't seem to turn up anything. I jotted down a list of minor differences (but I suspect they're all inconsequential). I'll check all the items on that list anyhow.
On another track, I'm eager to try another unistall, but this time I want to make absolutely sure that any reference to STO has been wiped from my registry, before I reinstall again. Anyone have any idea on how best to do that?
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
I wonder, of the ones that are able to connect, what is the IP# address that is being giving to those, if there is a bad DNS entry being propagated continuously. A round-about-fix could be to be changing the Hosts file. But thats ONLY if the IP# number of a working instance and non-working instance has different IP#s. If they are the same, hosts file wouldn't work.
Ping wird ausgef?hrt f?r patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41] mit 32 B
ytes Daten:
Antwort von 208.95.185.41: Bytes=32 Zeit=121ms TTL=49
Antwort von 208.95.185.41: Bytes=32 Zeit=119ms TTL=49
i have _NOT_ tested this and only overread the articles, so please read hem carefully and decide for yourself if this is what you need to do...
Thanks for the heads up NCC53702! I actually just poked around in 'CCleaner' and it has a registry cleaning function. I just did two scans, went for broke, and zapped all the stuff it told me was useless in my registry. Hopefully that won't cause further problems.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
The registry is like an engine carburetor, you tweak 1 thing wrong and its all over. All I did was go in and wipe out any folder that said Perfect World or Cryptic Studios. So I have tried the registry trick, I think we are running in circles. Thew poster who restored his whole system cant get in either so that should tell us all the installs and uninstalls and registry edits are useless. The problem is with Cryptic or PWE. Ack! Plus it seems support has given up on me again. No word from them since yesterday when I said their solution was useless.
The registry is like an engine carburetor, you tweak 1 thing wrong and its all over. All I did was go in and wipe out any folder that said Perfect World or Cryptic Studios. So I have tried the registry trick, I think we are running in circles. Thew poster who restored his whole system cant get in either so that should tell us all the installs and uninstalls and registry edits are useless. The problem is with Cryptic or PWE. Ack! Plus it seems support has given up on me again. No word from them since yesterday when I said their solution was useless.
Lets get this thread to 100 Pages!
Bannon3 man, we're starting to think alike!!!:D Before running 'CCleaner' and doing another uninstall and reinstall, I too thought of that dude who had posted here, stating that he had done a complete format and restore of his system, to no avail.
'CCleaner' did find some references to Cryptic, Pando MB and STO, after I unistalled the game entirely again. I then restarted my system and ran 'CCleaner' again (both times clearing out not only the registry but anything and everything else that was safe to zap), just to make sure everything had been wiped prior to a reinstall. Reinstalled the game (from the torrent I downloaded night before last). Still the same damned bug.
So, yeah, pretty convinced it's not my system at this point. And thankfully, despite 'CCleaner', my 'carburetor', along with the rest of my rig, seems to be running fine.;)
I wouldn't give up hope on PWE support as yet Bannon3. They've written back to me three or four times now, since I first filed a ticket. And sometimes a day or two passed between responses. I should note that, beyond filing my initial ticket, I have responded to them via my Hotmail's 'reply' button, within the emails PWE has sent me. Glad that works too, 'cause I can't seem to login to their support page at all now.
Unless there's another response from PWE by this evening, I suspect we won't hear back from them until Monday. Just continue being persistent all!
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Yeah the complete format and reinstall doesn't do jack but make it a tad faster at making you want to scream in Klingon at the please be patient bit. The laptop needed wiping so wasn't all bad news. It's nothing to do with our machines or ISP's it's on there end.
I'm awaiting a mail back from my mail telling them all I've done and referencing this thread to stop them giving me cut and paste fixes I listed all the posted ones. Saying do not ask me to.....
Oh well I'm hopeful they'll do something guys but until it hits a wider audience we're the echo.
I can't help but think this says is systemic and will spread slowly until fixed.
DD
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Original Join Date May 2009 - Real 1000 Day Veteran
Interestingly it connected today. And tracert gave me a very different path. Going through cogentco. Thats suggests that my issue was dns cached at ISP(s). I was a bit tried and couldn't be bothered looking at who in the chain was caching the DNS. My other thought was a faulty load balancer sorting by IP or mac address. Good luck to the rest of you.
In future we may want to nslookup and see who's dropping the ball. Interesting I checked the IP with several online nslookups yesterday and they gave me same results. I wonder if they move data centers in a rush?
[QUOTE=averydd;5441991 I can't help but think this is systemic and will spread slowly until fixed. DD[/QUOTE]
This has been my thought from the beginning, seems more and more people come down with the problem everyday and probably only a small few come to the forums, it could be far more. So I guess we wait for another 6 months until the cascade spreads to enough players and they have 1/4 of their base getting through I think I will go eat some Chinese food and forget my troubles here.
Thought I would add this reply, I couldnt beleve it THE SAME SOLUTION THEY HAVE ASKED FOR 10 TIMES!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Hello again,
Thank you very much for the example. We are currently aware of the issue that you have described and are investigating any possible cause.
If available, please update this ticket with the results of your own traceroute scan. Please take a screenshot of the results and attach it here.
To run a Traceroute:
1. Click on "Start"
2. Click on "Run"
3. Vista and 7 users need to go to "Start" then "Start Search"
4. Type "cmd" into the dialog box and press Enter.
5. In the window that opens type "tracert patchserver.crypticstudios.com"
6. Check the speed listed on the return
If this is not an option, please keep an eye on the forums and the patch notes for more information about this issue as our investigation continues.
Kind regards,
GM Heartbreaker
LMAO. We start back at the tracert again. Sigh. Wheres my food? lol
Then they will send me a msg back saying the image didnt go through and could I please attach the results, then they wont get that and ask that I past the notes then they will say they are incomplete cause I only get 10 lines for some reason.
More new news ladies and gents!!! And Bannon3, the request PWE made of you may well be going somewhere, at long last!! I just got finished replying to the second email that PWE Tech Support had sent me today. Here's what they sent, about 40 minutes or so ago:
"Response Via Email (GM) 08/24/2012 02:21 PM
Hello ,
Our engineers are still investigating the issue and have asked for some additional information.
1. Your IP address (you can find this by going to [url]www.ipchicken.com):[/url]
2. Are you able to successfully load http://support.crypticstudios.com? If not, please provide some details as to what happens when you attempt to load the page.
3. Please run a tracert to http://support.crypticstudios.com and reply with the full results.
Thanks again for your patience.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment"
So, let's all hope that their "engineers' are miracle workers like Montgomery Scott, so we can all kiss this problem bye bye and get back to playing!!!:D
Update:Just got this reply from PWE, while I had been writing this post. It reads:
" Response Via Email (GM) 08/24/2012 04:03 PM
Hello ,
Thank you for the additional details. I have passed this information to our engineers who will continue to investigate the issue.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment"
Third email from them today!!! Let's hope momentum is on our side this time around!
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Well they must really like you, I have only heard once. At least someone is giving them the data and I can think of no one better than you, I am not the Crusader I was when this issue began, back then I would have done anything to solve this. Now I want it resolved but I am tired of the fight, its been a long 3 months when we get back in I wont be able to leave the game, I will be too afraid to close it. LOL Good work methos my friend!
I am really hoping this is something simple thats been right under their noses the whole time but without any tickets or data it just went unnoticed. Puhlleeeaze God!! lol
Well they must really like you, I have only heard once. At least someone is giving them the data and I can think of no one better than you, I am not the Crusader I was when this issue began, back then I would have done anything to solve this. Now I want it resolved but I am tired of the fight, its been a long 3 months when we get back in I wont be able to leave the game, I will be too afraid to close it. LOL Good work methos my friend!
I am really hoping this is something simple thats been right under their noses the whole time but without any tickets or data it just went unnoticed. Puhlleeeaze God!! lol
Well no need to thank me for "good work" yet Bannon3. Hopefully we can all thank each other when all this is happily over and done with.:) What I found encouraging about the last three responses I got from PWE tech is that, in all of the exhaustive digging I've done online, across several PWE game forums for the past week, I never saw responses like the one I received today. The last two response I most definitely hadn't seen elsewhere online.
So, hopefully we're not simply getting lip service this go around. And with the increase in people posting in this thread, as well the number of other similar threads that have popped up, it really does seem as though this problem has been spreading.
For my part, when and if this does get resolved on Cryptic/PWE's end, I really, really, really want to know what caused this problem. I have literally been troubleshooting this problem every day since last Friday, for at least a few hours a day, to no avail.
Just this morning, when I did the last bit of system settings comparisons with my pal, I jotted down 32 varying items. Then, later this afternoon, I spent a while researching each and every single one of those variables, to determine if one of 'em might be at the root of this problem. And then, while doing that, it occurred to me that I ought to check msconfig settings with my pal too, if this isn't resolved by the time he gets back from 'Star Wars Celebration'.:P
So yeah, whether it's something simple or complicated, I really want to know what it is, so we're all better prepared if it should happen again.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Well I wouldnt have had the patience to dig and search across forums, I do however check in on anything new that relates to server or login issues and if it looks similar I direct them here so we can grow this thread into a juggernaut that will get attention and eventually resolution. When we get back in, I am being optimistic here, we will have to meet at ESD for a drink!
I'm terribly sorry, however the file was discarded by our system for an unknown reason.
However, if I understand correctly (and following the example you provided), you get through a few hops and then a bunch of "* * * Request timed out. " errors, correct?
I will forward the information to our investigation team for you. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that the issue may have caused. Please keep an eye on the forums and patch notes for any news moving forward.
Please let us know if anything changes on your end!
Kind regards,
GM Heartbreaker
Should I laugh or cry?
Looking on steam found a game called Universe Sandbox looks amazing, i recommend looking into it to kill some time http://universesandbox.com/
Interestingly it connected today. And tracert gave me a very different path. Going through cogentco. Thats suggests that my issue was dns cached at ISP(s). I was a bit tried and couldn't be bothered looking at who in the chain was caching the DNS. My other thought was a faulty load balancer sorting by IP or mac address. Good luck to the rest of you.
In future we may want to nslookup and see who's dropping the ball. Interesting I checked the IP with several online nslookups yesterday and they gave me same results. I wonder if they move data centers in a rush?
Same here. 14 hours ago, I could not connect. I never rebooted my machine, never shut down my router, etc. Because I KNEW the problem was not on my end.
With round-robin DNSing, you have multiple physical machines all handling requests to a single domain name. For example, www.crypticstudios.com may route to a totally different numeric IP for 10 different people, if cryptic has the DNS entry for www.crypticstudios.com set to round-robin and has 10 different IPs associated with that domain.
So if one of those 10 physical servers was to fail somehow, 1/10th of the users going to that website will not be able to connect. And that certainly seems like what happened here. It would explain why some people were able to connect, and others were not able to connect. The patch server's domain name is probably set to round-robin across quite a few IP address/physical machines. And one of those machines simply failed.
It's unfortunate that this company doesn't have alarms set for such events. When I ran my hosting company for 6 years, I was pitifully small compared to a company like cryptic. Even though I was small, and had only a few hundred clients, I STILL had a system set up so that if any one of my servers crashed, I would be immediately notified via my cell phone.
Servers do crash. That's simply a fact of life. But a professional company will not only expect that this will happen, but SHOULD have adequate measures in place so that the appropriate people are notified IMMEDIATELY when the crash happens. The technicians at cryptic should not rely on feedback from end-users to determine when one of their machines fail. They should quite literally know about it moments after it happens.
Tossing my hat into the ring. I'm having the same issues since the last patch. Cant even support a ticket thru the game as it won't stay logged in long enough now.
Hey Grouchy, yer fleetmate is in trouble here! LOL
Been trying everything everyone else has tried short of shooting the PC with my shotgun.
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
<snip>
1 1 ms <1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 28 ms 24 ms 26 ms 108-72-196-2.lightspeed.wepbfl.sbcglobal.net [10
8.72.196.2]
3 35 ms 27 ms 27 ms 99.128.141.32
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms 70.159.201.246
7 29 ms 31 ms 31 ms 12.81.8.88
8 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms 12.81.8.63
9 33 ms 34 ms 33 ms 74.175.192.166
10 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms cr81.fldfl.ip.att.net [12.122.106.94]
11 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms cr2.ormfl.ip.att.net [12.122.1.45]
12 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms cr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.5.142]
13 46 ms 44 ms 63 ms attga02jt.ip.att.net [12.123.22.25]
14 61 ms 59 ms 59 ms 192.205.36.238
15 61 ms 61 ms 61 ms te0-3-0-3.ccr21.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.83.181]
16 60 ms 60 ms 60 ms te0-1-0-6.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.24.153]
17 65 ms 67 ms 65 ms te0-1-0-3.ccr21.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.5.245]
18 70 ms 72 ms 72 ms te0-2-0-1.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.44.94]
19 73 ms 71 ms 71 ms te3-2.ccr01.bos06.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.46.
130]
20 75 ms 72 ms 71 ms 38.111.40.114
21 71 ms 71 ms 72 ms 208.95.185.41
edit: can't submit a ticket online either as the support site doesn't recognize my login. Time to start spamming PWE Facebook and Twitter where the public can see the crappy support PWE gives.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." Q Join the 44th Fleet. [FED and KDF] Apply Online: startrek.44thfleet.com
Your call was spot on Bannon3! I wouldn't laugh or cry really, as it's evidently clear that they actually did read the message you sent to them. Which is definitely a step up from the form letter replies we had been receiving previously. And, despite the fact that I suspect there's going to be no movement on a solution until Monday (due to the PWE Tech folk likely having the weekend off), I am encouraged that there does, at last, seem to be some genuine activity on their part in trying to resolve this issue.
Same here. 14 hours ago, I could not connect. I never rebooted my machine, never shut down my router, etc. Because I KNEW the problem was not on my end.
With round-robin DNSing, you have multiple physical machines all handling requests to a single domain name. For example, www.crypticstudios.com may route to a totally different numeric IP for 10 different people, if cryptic has the DNS entry for www.crypticstudios.com set to round-robin and has 10 different IPs associated with that domain.
So if one of those 10 physical servers was to fail somehow, 1/10th of the users going to that website will not be able to connect. And that certainly seems like what happened here. It would explain why some people were able to connect, and others were not able to connect. The patch server's domain name is probably set to round-robin across quite a few IP address/physical machines. And one of those machines simply failed.
It's unfortunate that this company doesn't have alarms set for such events. When I ran my hosting company for 6 years, I was pitifully small compared to a company like cryptic. Even though I was small, and had only a few hundred clients, I STILL had a system set up so that if any one of my servers crashed, I would be immediately notified via my cell phone.
Servers do crash. That's simply a fact of life. But a professional company will not only expect that this will happen, but SHOULD have adequate measures in place so that the appropriate people are notified IMMEDIATELY when the crash happens. The technicians at cryptic should not rely on feedback from end-users to determine when one of their machines fail. They should quite literally know about it moments after it happens.
Captainepi, this is the most logical proposition I've read all week for what's very likely the cause of this problem. Thank you kindly for sharing that with us!
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Well methos, we can hope if they are starting to get a clue about this and know its a problem they will leave some people on over the weekend to work on it. Servers crash over the weekend etc, they have to have some kind of support or tech team in place. Maybe not fully staffed like Mon-Fri but we have to hope some are on and have been tasked with this so we will shut up and leave them alone.
Comments
Grouchyotaku, I appreciate your specificity in responding this go around. Regarding 'ipconfig/flushdns', I can assure you that I have done that more times than I recall throughout the past week. As for 'connection throttling', I did a bit of research on all that last night and even ran a number of diagnostic programs to determine whether or not that might've been the case. All diagnostics came up clear. My ISP is Time Warner Brighthouse Roadrunner. I've been subscribed to their cable internet service for about twelve years now and, in all that time, I've barely ever had any problems with them whatsoever. Pretty darned sure that 'connection throttling' is not at issue here.
Aamche, you brought up some interesting points that have flitted about in my mind over this past week. Failure to connect at the network server level, on Cryptic/PWE's end, has likely been my chief culprit in all this. And I completely agree with your take on this problem having little, if anything to do with our respective ISPs. With regard to the possibility of an 'IP block', at our end: I don't have a router at all, as my desktop PC's ethernet card is directly connected to my cable modem. I have, however, both completely powered down and unplugged my cable modem and run 'ipconfig/release', 'ipconfig/renew' and 'ipconfig/flushdns' several times throughout the past week.
Captainepi, thanks for your wonderfully thorough analysis! Your detailed explanation of the nature of DNS servers has shed some light on theories that have been nagging at me throughout the past week. And thank you ever so much for giving us Cryptic's phone number! I do have unlimited long distance calling and I'll most definitely be giving them a call in a little over two hours!
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
However, most of you who are suffering from connection issues has had these problems longer then one or two days, which implies there is more then a simple IP address change going on here...
Since all that happened, sometime mid-last week (either Tuesday or Wednesday before last), I have been unable to connect to STO's launcher login/patch updater at all.
It seems to me as though Cryptic/PWE changed their IP address for this forum, as even the link found via Google search failed to connect (though oddly I gained access via the Google cached version of this Forum). Everything seems to indicate that a similar IP address change occurred for STO's patchserver site as well. Yet, some have been able to connect, while those of us here haven't been able to connect at all. It's as though we've been shut down, like the U.S.S. Saratoga in 'Star Trek IV' by that whale probe.
And after having obsessively tried to solve this problem for the past week now, I most definitely feel like I've been 'probed'!:P
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Replaced router and got a newer model from my isp, still the same, disabled account guard, still the same.
It cant be the machine as I did everything from a freshly formatted windows with nothing but my internet security and star trek online, with all the sto exe's allowed full access. All the drivers are current and up to date. I've tried the compatibility modes and nothing.
It gets to the cogent.b06 router then the packets just stop at cryptics systems.
If you guys have any other ideas I have no issues formatting my laptop again as a testbed, only takes an hour i saved the downloaded torrent file of sto to a memory stick so i dont have a long time to download things on it.
Original Join Date May 2009 - Real 1000 Day Veteran
since the patch yesterday, i have the same issue like you guys.
started the game yesterday, logged in fine, server said: doing maintenance right now.
so i went on doing some other things till the sheduled downtime had to be over (at last on my clock). so i started the game again, downloaded and installed the patch just fine and logged into the game. the server said: doing maintenance right now.
i was suprised since it was around 8 o?clock local time (utc +1) and the maintenance should have been long over by now (or i miscalculated time zones... like chief o?brian, i?m not very fond of temporal mechanics
i got the "please be patient error"...
i started to read this forum, in fact i have nearly read every entry or most of it and tried connecting every now and than... i was getting really frustrated when i saw, some of you had this issue for a long time now...
when i came home from work today, i just thought to give it another try, no success. read the new forum entries... made a tracert to the patchserver:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
C:\Users\vel>tracert patchserver.crypticstudios.com
Routenverfolgung zu patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41] ?ber maximal
30 Abschnitte:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms alice.box [192.168.1.1]
2 22 ms 28 ms 22 ms rdsl-gtng-de02.nw.mediaways.net [213.20.59.11]
3 21 ms 23 ms 21 ms xmws-gtng-de02-chan-18.nw.mediaways.net [195.71.
42.37]
4 25 ms 21 ms 20 ms rmws-gtng-de01-chan-1-0.nw.mediaways.net [217.18
8.59.66]
5 23 ms 24 ms 24 ms rmwc-gtso-de02-ge-0-3-1-0.nw.mediaways.net [195.
71.97.193]
6 27 ms 32 ms 28 ms rmwc-dsdf-de01-xe-1-1-0-0.nw.mediaways.net [195.
71.242.209]
7 55 ms 28 ms 28 ms Xe7-0-3-0-grtdusix1.red.telefonica-wholesale.net
[84.16.7.229]
8 39 ms 40 ms 39 ms Xe1-0-0-0-grtlontl1.red.telefonica-wholesale.net
[94.142.120.238]
9 68 ms 84 ms 200 ms 195.50.90.129
10 45 ms 40 ms 39 ms ae-21-52.car1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.98]
11 40 ms 39 ms 40 ms sl-crs1-lon-.sprintlink.net [213.206.131.21]
12 121 ms 127 ms 121 ms sl-crs2-nyc-0-5-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.16
4]
13 122 ms 128 ms 127 ms sl-crs2-spr-0-0-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.25.2
3]
14 140 ms 139 ms 135 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]
15 119 ms 119 ms 119 ms 208.30.215.82
16 118 ms 124 ms 119 ms border11.te7-1-bbnet1.bsn.pnap.net [63.251.128.4
1]
17 121 ms 123 ms 124 ms cryptic-3.border11.bsn.pnap.net [216.52.61.78]
18 126 ms 118 ms 120 ms 208.95.185.41
Ablaufverfolgung beendet.
C:\Users\vel>
these looked really fine to me... so i decided to "join the club" and tell you all my system specs and isp and so on...
just when i wanted to quote the "please be patient" message, i started sto again aaand... the bloody thing connected!!!
i am absolutely and totally at a loss here... between the first unsuccessfull try today and the successful try were around 20 minutes... i did nothing except for the tracert.. NOTHING!
so, for my specs:
i am coneccted to ALICE DSL which is part of o2 germany, i think...
this is also where i am located, germany...
system specs are:
- Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 (and all other available patches installed)
- AMD Phenom 9600 CPU
- ATI Radeon HD 5700
as for network adapters:
i am using an Atheros AR5006X to connect to a wrt45gl running ddwrt which is connected to the frackin alice dsl modem thingi :mad:
further installed adapters on my system are a VirtualBox Host-Only Adapter and an OpenVPN TAP-Adapter.
I am currently logged into the game and running around on Memory Alpha...
Hope i can reconnect, once i leave the game
i keep you informed, whether i can connect from now on or not...
vel
Alas, I still cannot reconnect.:(
Quick and very important questions for all of ya.
If I am to do another uninstall of STO, before reinstalling, how might you suggest that I make sure that any and all references to STO get deleted from my registry?
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
NOTE TO ADMINS AND CRYPTIC: I request that somebody helps us out before this spreads over the WHOLE of europe and it gets out of hand
I further suggested that I suspected that they weren't reading our complaint messages at all, as we've all clearly received form letters in response. Given that, I stated that it seemed evident that whoever I was communicating with is likely incapable of dealing with this problem properly and I firmly requested that this problem be bumped up the PWE Tech Support ladder, to a Department or person that can rectify this issue.
This is what I got in response, from PWE:
"Response Via Email (GM) 08/24/2012 10:23 AM
Hello ,
We apologize that the problem is persisting and if you feel that the possible solutions provided are not helpful. The connection issue you're experiencing has been escalated for further review, however, we don't have an estimate on when it may be resolved. We'll update you with more details once we have further information. Thank you for your continued patience.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment"
Like I said, somewhat promising...though I'm not about to hold my breath. That "we don't have an estimate on when it may be resolved" bit doesn't sound too encouraging. Yet, at least they're now stating that they've bumped this problem up the ladder.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
I was going to do the same thing, start a new ticket reference my support and say I demand to speak to a supervisor or someone in charge there, however their hours are Mon-Fri, so it would be ignored over the weekend. I will wait till Mon, how can a 24/7 game only have support 5 days a week for 10 hrs a day or something?
Hence, I'm not sure what calling Cryptic might do to help. Yet, if anyone else wants to call 'em, per Captainepi, that number is 408-399-1969.
Yeah, that's why I made sure to email them early this morning, before they opened up, while waiting for my pal to call for the last round of system settings comparison. With any luck, someone at a higher level is already working on the problem and it'll get resolved by the end of their workday. Again, not holding my breath on that one.
By the way, system settings comparison with my friend didn't seem to turn up anything. I jotted down a list of minor differences (but I suspect they're all inconsequential). I'll check all the items on that list anyhow.
On another track, I'm eager to try another unistall, but this time I want to make absolutely sure that any reference to STO has been wiped from my registry, before I reinstall again. Anyone have any idea on how best to do that?
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
i have been droped out of the game once (server not responding) but i can reconnect and everything seems fine so far...
i have not rebooted my pc since but i doubt that will crash sto again
however, i will report tomorrow whether everything is still working properly or not.
i wish, i know what fixed it for me (so far) so i could tell you guys...
@methos71:
http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/How_to_completely_delete_a_program%27s_Registry_leftovers
is a very crude methode and you have to know, what you are looking for. you can track all changes made to the registry during the installation of a program like
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/tracking-registry-and-files-changes-when-installing-software-in-windows/
i have _NOT_ tested this and only overread the articles, so please read hem carefully and decide for yourself if this is what you need to do...
Ping wird ausgef?hrt f?r patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41] mit 32 B
ytes Daten:
Antwort von 208.95.185.41: Bytes=32 Zeit=121ms TTL=49
Antwort von 208.95.185.41: Bytes=32 Zeit=119ms TTL=49
Ping-Statistik f?r 208.95.185.41:
Pakete: Gesendet = 2, Empfangen = 2, Verloren = 0
(0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 119ms, Maximum = 121ms, Mittelwert = 120ms
STRG-C
^C
C:\Users\vel>
still the same as in my tracert...
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Lets get this thread to 100 Pages!
'CCleaner' did find some references to Cryptic, Pando MB and STO, after I unistalled the game entirely again. I then restarted my system and ran 'CCleaner' again (both times clearing out not only the registry but anything and everything else that was safe to zap), just to make sure everything had been wiped prior to a reinstall. Reinstalled the game (from the torrent I downloaded night before last). Still the same damned bug.
So, yeah, pretty convinced it's not my system at this point. And thankfully, despite 'CCleaner', my 'carburetor', along with the rest of my rig, seems to be running fine.;)
I wouldn't give up hope on PWE support as yet Bannon3. They've written back to me three or four times now, since I first filed a ticket. And sometimes a day or two passed between responses. I should note that, beyond filing my initial ticket, I have responded to them via my Hotmail's 'reply' button, within the emails PWE has sent me. Glad that works too, 'cause I can't seem to login to their support page at all now.
Unless there's another response from PWE by this evening, I suspect we won't hear back from them until Monday. Just continue being persistent all!
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
I'm awaiting a mail back from my mail telling them all I've done and referencing this thread to stop them giving me cut and paste fixes I listed all the posted ones. Saying do not ask me to.....
Oh well I'm hopeful they'll do something guys but until it hits a wider audience we're the echo.
I can't help but think this says is systemic and will spread slowly until fixed.
DD
Original Join Date May 2009 - Real 1000 Day Veteran
In future we may want to nslookup and see who's dropping the ball. Interesting I checked the IP with several online nslookups yesterday and they gave me same results. I wonder if they move data centers in a rush?
This has been my thought from the beginning, seems more and more people come down with the problem everyday and probably only a small few come to the forums, it could be far more. So I guess we wait for another 6 months until the cascade spreads to enough players and they have 1/4 of their base getting through
Hello again,
Thank you very much for the example. We are currently aware of the issue that you have described and are investigating any possible cause.
If available, please update this ticket with the results of your own traceroute scan. Please take a screenshot of the results and attach it here.
To run a Traceroute:
1. Click on "Start"
2. Click on "Run"
3. Vista and 7 users need to go to "Start" then "Start Search"
4. Type "cmd" into the dialog box and press Enter.
5. In the window that opens type "tracert patchserver.crypticstudios.com"
6. Check the speed listed on the return
If this is not an option, please keep an eye on the forums and the patch notes for more information about this issue as our investigation continues.
Kind regards,
GM Heartbreaker
LMAO. We start back at the tracert again. Sigh. Wheres my food? lol
Then they will send me a msg back saying the image didnt go through and could I please attach the results, then they wont get that and ask that I past the notes then they will say they are incomplete cause I only get 10 lines for some reason.
"Response Via Email (GM) 08/24/2012 02:21 PM
Hello ,
Our engineers are still investigating the issue and have asked for some additional information.
1. Your IP address (you can find this by going to [url]www.ipchicken.com):[/url]
2. Are you able to successfully load http://support.crypticstudios.com? If not, please provide some details as to what happens when you attempt to load the page.
3. Please run a tracert to http://support.crypticstudios.com and reply with the full results.
Thanks again for your patience.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment"
So, let's all hope that their "engineers' are miracle workers like Montgomery Scott, so we can all kiss this problem bye bye and get back to playing!!!:D
Update:Just got this reply from PWE, while I had been writing this post. It reads:
" Response Via Email (GM) 08/24/2012 04:03 PM
Hello ,
Thank you for the additional details. I have passed this information to our engineers who will continue to investigate the issue.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment"
Third email from them today!!! Let's hope momentum is on our side this time around!
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
I am really hoping this is something simple thats been right under their noses the whole time but without any tickets or data it just went unnoticed. Puhlleeeaze God!! lol
Well no need to thank me for "good work" yet Bannon3. Hopefully we can all thank each other when all this is happily over and done with.:) What I found encouraging about the last three responses I got from PWE tech is that, in all of the exhaustive digging I've done online, across several PWE game forums for the past week, I never saw responses like the one I received today. The last two response I most definitely hadn't seen elsewhere online.
So, hopefully we're not simply getting lip service this go around. And with the increase in people posting in this thread, as well the number of other similar threads that have popped up, it really does seem as though this problem has been spreading.
For my part, when and if this does get resolved on Cryptic/PWE's end, I really, really, really want to know what caused this problem. I have literally been troubleshooting this problem every day since last Friday, for at least a few hours a day, to no avail.
Just this morning, when I did the last bit of system settings comparisons with my pal, I jotted down 32 varying items. Then, later this afternoon, I spent a while researching each and every single one of those variables, to determine if one of 'em might be at the root of this problem. And then, while doing that, it occurred to me that I ought to check msconfig settings with my pal too, if this isn't resolved by the time he gets back from 'Star Wars Celebration'.:P
So yeah, whether it's something simple or complicated, I really want to know what it is, so we're all better prepared if it should happen again.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Hello again,
I'm terribly sorry, however the file was discarded by our system for an unknown reason.
However, if I understand correctly (and following the example you provided), you get through a few hops and then a bunch of "* * * Request timed out. " errors, correct?
I will forward the information to our investigation team for you. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that the issue may have caused. Please keep an eye on the forums and patch notes for any news moving forward.
Please let us know if anything changes on your end!
Kind regards,
GM Heartbreaker
Should I laugh or cry?
Looking on steam found a game called Universe Sandbox looks amazing, i recommend looking into it to kill some time http://universesandbox.com/
Same here. 14 hours ago, I could not connect. I never rebooted my machine, never shut down my router, etc. Because I KNEW the problem was not on my end.
With round-robin DNSing, you have multiple physical machines all handling requests to a single domain name. For example, www.crypticstudios.com may route to a totally different numeric IP for 10 different people, if cryptic has the DNS entry for www.crypticstudios.com set to round-robin and has 10 different IPs associated with that domain.
So if one of those 10 physical servers was to fail somehow, 1/10th of the users going to that website will not be able to connect. And that certainly seems like what happened here. It would explain why some people were able to connect, and others were not able to connect. The patch server's domain name is probably set to round-robin across quite a few IP address/physical machines. And one of those machines simply failed.
It's unfortunate that this company doesn't have alarms set for such events. When I ran my hosting company for 6 years, I was pitifully small compared to a company like cryptic. Even though I was small, and had only a few hundred clients, I STILL had a system set up so that if any one of my servers crashed, I would be immediately notified via my cell phone.
Servers do crash. That's simply a fact of life. But a professional company will not only expect that this will happen, but SHOULD have adequate measures in place so that the appropriate people are notified IMMEDIATELY when the crash happens. The technicians at cryptic should not rely on feedback from end-users to determine when one of their machines fail. They should quite literally know about it moments after it happens.
Hey Grouchy, yer fleetmate is in trouble here! LOL
Been trying everything everyone else has tried short of shooting the PC with my shotgun.
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
<snip>
1 1 ms <1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 28 ms 24 ms 26 ms 108-72-196-2.lightspeed.wepbfl.sbcglobal.net [10
8.72.196.2]
3 35 ms 27 ms 27 ms 99.128.141.32
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms 70.159.201.246
7 29 ms 31 ms 31 ms 12.81.8.88
8 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms 12.81.8.63
9 33 ms 34 ms 33 ms 74.175.192.166
10 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms cr81.fldfl.ip.att.net [12.122.106.94]
11 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms cr2.ormfl.ip.att.net [12.122.1.45]
12 47 ms 47 ms 48 ms cr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.5.142]
13 46 ms 44 ms 63 ms attga02jt.ip.att.net [12.123.22.25]
14 61 ms 59 ms 59 ms 192.205.36.238
15 61 ms 61 ms 61 ms te0-3-0-3.ccr21.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.83.181]
16 60 ms 60 ms 60 ms te0-1-0-6.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.24.153]
17 65 ms 67 ms 65 ms te0-1-0-3.ccr21.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.5.245]
18 70 ms 72 ms 72 ms te0-2-0-1.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.44.94]
19 73 ms 71 ms 71 ms te3-2.ccr01.bos06.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.46.
130]
20 75 ms 72 ms 71 ms 38.111.40.114
21 71 ms 71 ms 72 ms 208.95.185.41
Trace complete.
Here is where things get bad:
contacting nettest server..
Local IP: <snip>
Ping: 136.6 msec
Port: 80: 157 KB/sec 10 KB/sec 176 KB/sec 500
Port: 80: 375 KB/sec 25 KB/sec 448 KB/sec 500
Port: 443:
and then it hangs...
edit: can't submit a ticket online either as the support site doesn't recognize my login. Time to start spamming PWE Facebook and Twitter where the public can see the crappy support PWE gives.
Join the 44th Fleet. [FED and KDF] Apply Online: startrek.44thfleet.com
Your call was spot on Bannon3! I wouldn't laugh or cry really, as it's evidently clear that they actually did read the message you sent to them. Which is definitely a step up from the form letter replies we had been receiving previously. And, despite the fact that I suspect there's going to be no movement on a solution until Monday (due to the PWE Tech folk likely having the weekend off), I am encouraged that there does, at last, seem to be some genuine activity on their part in trying to resolve this issue.
Captainepi, this is the most logical proposition I've read all week for what's very likely the cause of this problem. Thank you kindly for sharing that with us!
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71