OT - Help Please

[The Medway Handyman]

Hi

I suspect SWMBO has been buggering about with the PC again. I can't seem to send or recieve UK-DIY posts. Keeps telling me it's unable to connect to the server.

Any Ideas?

Dave TMH

[Steve Firth]

Divorce.

[Newshound]

Well, that one got through. Though I suppose this post is not much help to you!

[John Miller]

In my experience, it usually means that the server is offline for some reason and will reappear at some point in the future - unless you're a customer of Talktalk, who never fix the server and swear blind that everything is working OK.

If you can access any other newsgroups from the same server, then I'm wrong and I would be rather baffled. It might be worth trying to subscribe all over again.

John Miller

[Ian Stirling]

Worst case, use google-groups to post, till you fix it.

[John Rumm]

A few...

Either your software is no longer configured correctly to connect to the server, or, there is a problem at the server end, or, there is something obstructing the connection in the middle.

We need to find out where in the chain it is going wrong...

Firstly your softwear. You normally use outlook express it seems. So check that it still have the right usenet server specified. Details for setup on blueyonder can be found here:

(These instructions are for V5, but V6 is near enough the same)

If those look ok, next thing to check is that the server is actually up and listening...

If you open a command prompt (Start -> all programs -> accessories -> command prompt or choose "run" and enter cmd (assuming Win2k/xp))

and type:

ping news.blueyonder.co.uk

Do you get a reply? e.g.:

K:\Documents and Settings\John>ping news.blueyonder.co.uk

Pinging news.blueyonder.co.uk [194.117.143.37] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 194.117.143.37: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=247 Reply from 194.117.143.37: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=247 Reply from 194.117.143.37: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=247 Reply from 194.117.143.37: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=247

Ping statistics for 194.117.143.37: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 20ms

If that works, one final test. What happens if you do:

telnet news.blueyonder.co.uk 119

You should see the news servers welcome message.

If the ping fails, does it manage to resolve the IP address of the server ok? If not it sounds like a DNS issue - either blueyonders or your access to it. If the IP address resolves but the ping or the telnet fails, then you may have a routing issue (blueyonder again) or you may have managed to firewall yourself off from the server. Do you run a firewall like zonealarm or outpost? If so check the list of allowed applications etc. I have seen novice users answering popup questions from these programs such that they deny themselves all access to the internet for all their major applications!

Hope that helps get you started....

[John Rumm]

A quick look at the header of the OP would suggest he already worked that bit out ;-)

[rrh]

news-text.blueyonder.co.uk has been down for me since yesterday and I'm reading (and posting this) via news.blueyonder.co.uk. Also heading over to the support forum, which is bound to be full of details.

[rrh]

And here it is from blueyonder.support.usenet (19:46 yesterday):

Guys,

Just to inform you of the situation of text.news.blueyonder.co.uk.

We have had a catastrophic failure with the server this afternoon and are working a couple of avenues to come to the speediest resolution. Replacement parts are on route although coming from the continent and this will obviously take some time.

In the meantime news.blueyonder.co.uk is available for use.

Regards

Alan Gordon Internet Operations

[Weatherlawyer]

posting-host=82.34.111.96; posting-account=n3-ibw0AAABy7V9pJfy8niOgyANwVw-Y

However Blue Yonder was or is owned by the same bunch of charlies that ruin Tiscali is it not?

[Vortex]

Our business ISP uses Supernews as nntp provider.

The service seems absolutely bulletproof, seems to include every newsgroup on the planet, and has good retention. The best I've ever experienced.

$4 per month (about £2.10) so long as you are not into binaries.

David

[meow2222]

OE is so problematic I just wont maintain it. Switch to sensible software and most of your problems will be gone. Then its worth sorting out.

NT

[gort]

Where did he say he was using OE ?

Dave

[Alex]

Message headers speak for themselves :)

Alex

[Sylvain VAN DER WALDE]

That's the most likely reason, in my experience.

Sylvain.

[gort]

All I see is Mozilla/4.0, must be lying then .

DAve

[Phil L]

The blueyonder text server has gone down, the binary one is still up and running but it takes a few minutes for posts to appear after you've sent them, at busy times it can take up to an hour. The text server has literally fell to pieces and has been demolished and is being rebuilt as we speak, but parts are coming from the continent though, so it's anyone's guess as to when it will be running smoothly again.

[Phil L]

it is not...it's owned by Virgin / NTL / Telewest and will be renamed Virgin Media in the near future

[Stuart Noble]

Very useful response

[Bob Eager]

You're looking at the post from MH complaining that it had stopped working. He did that via Mozilla because....OE had stopped working. Do try to keep up!