Anyone else having problems?

Yes it's kinda been on and off all weekend but was totally not working today.

It was completely out yesterday when I tried. The error I got said it was a service issue. :shrug:

Yes same for me. At least yesterday.
I tried to remove some books that I had pending and one wish list book that was a gift for my May Exchnage partner but i could not get on the site.

It is up but slow.

couldn't get on yesterday and still can't get on today. I often have problems with cliffs but I've done all the things Dr Cherie said and it still won't work :(

I haven't had any problems with it if I open it with Safari - can't open it with Firefox, but that's been the case for some months now and Cliff told me it was something to do with the size of my wishlist.... :shrug: Anyway, it's working fine for me using Safari.

I just checked and it seems fine...

Must of cleared up, I was using firefox yesterday and was updating my list, removing any books I no longer need and re-saving the ones I do with a more recent date.

the first time last night it wouldn't come up, but then I tried again and it did. :shrug:

I think it must have been restored from backup not long ago. There were books on my list I'm sure I'd removed. However, I could have just imagined removing them :shrug:

That's happened to me at BookMooch more than once. :blink:

Seems broken again today. This is what comes up whenever I try to go to someone's wishlist:

That's what I'm currently getting when I look at lists from bookshelves at BC.

But if I go directly to Cliff's it's fine. :shrug:

I can't get cliff's to work again :sigh:

It's working for me right now, yay!

But I'm starting to get worried that it will go down for good after what happened with CR's Relay site, so I'm going to copy-paste my wishlist into a word document just 'in case'. :unsure:

good idea!

Good idea App - I'd really hate that. I often have problems getting into it at home - no clue why - I have tried everything to sort it out.

Was it Cliff's or some other site that I'd once given some of you directions about adding something to your hosts file for?

If it was Cliff's and they moved the site to a different server (which judging by the errors I've seen lately could very well be the case, or else they rebuilt the current server and reinstalled a lot of the backend software).

But I do remember having someone do that for one particular site, that is, add an IP address to the hosts file for it. So if it was indeed Cliff's and if the site did move to a new server, you wouldn't be able to get to it anymore. (You'd get a Server Not Found error or the like.)

To check and see if you have something in your hosts file for Cliff's, look to this file:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Open it up in notepad or another text editor and see if you have a line that mentions cliff1976.net anywhere on it.

It says:

# Copyright © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost

Its working for me today.

Giz your hosts file is fine then. If you had a manual entry for Cliff's, you'd have a line similar to that localhohst one.

Thank you Cherie :kiss:

Any time you wanna know about social housing, mental health, drugs and alcohol or prisons, you can count on me :lol:

I STILL cannot get onto cliffs. And it's starting to really piss me off. I cannot think of a single reason why this is the one site I cannot reliably access.

And what did you say is the problem when you try to get there again? Do you have an exact error message you can give?

Server not found













Firefox can't find the server at bcwish.cliff1976.net.








* Check the address for typing errors such as
ww.example.com instead of
www.example.com

* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.

* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

I get the same message from IE both when using my 'favourites' and when googling. :shrug:

I've tried IE as well as my normal firefox - I've emptied my cache I've flushed my DNS I've added it to cookies I've gone via google, other people's links, my own link......

Wow, okay both Giz and Candy, both in the UK having the same error. It would appear to me at first that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) isn't able to resolve the name bcwish.cliff1976.net into it's associated IP address. Can you try something for me just to confirm this is the case, and if so, I'll have an appropriate workaround for you in my next post? :P

Bring up the Windows Command Prompt (Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt) and type ping bcwish.cliff1976.net. What's the output you get from that?

ping request could not find host bcwish.cliff1976.net . Please check the name and try again.

Another kinda odd thing with Cliff's... I changed my email and password months ago.. and now it's back to the old stuff. :shrug:

I did notice some stuff that I thought I had deleted, but it was still there.

I got in ok, just odd.

They must've had a crash and had to restore from backup cuz I've noticed some missing stuff too.

Okay, giz, remember that hosts file I pointed you to earlier? At C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

So bring that back up again and add this line to the bottom of that file and resave it.

64.38.221.213 bcwish.cliff1976.net


If you saved everything correctly, if you again try to ping bcwish.cliff1976.net, it should correctly respond from that address. And more importantly, it should now work in your browser.

As to the problem why it's not correctly resolving the name by your ISP's Domain Name Server (DNS), they'd have to debug that for you. What I've provided now is a workaround that'll give you the IP address to the server since your ISP's DNS is not.

It wouldn't let me save the host file - said access denied :(

Ahhhh must be set to read only (which is a security technique). There's a couple ways to change/fix that. Try this one first (since it's easier to explain). :P From the Command Prompt, type the following:

attrib -r -h C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Now try to add it and resave it and it should work.


If you want to set it back to read-only again after, you simply change the above to +r (the h attribute is for hidden. I wouldn't bother resetting that even though windows does by default to keep users from even seeing it.)

:shrug: :cry: :cry: :cry:

It didn't work

I don't know why - when I put the thing into cmd prompt it didn't say anything, it just went back to cmd prompt again. And it still says access denied :(

Thanks so much Cherie for all your help. I sort of understand what you are telling me to do, but I wouldn't know to do it myself. Ever. :giggle:

I will be back tomorrow for more Cherie magic!

Okay try typing just

attrib C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

which will tell us what atributes the file has. It might be that it's marked +s (system) too, and I think that might make it non-editable as well. But doing the attrib command without any arguments will tell us that for sure. (In my head, I was thinking that a system file was still editable but that might not be the case.)

It says A C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

There is a gap between the A and the C

Okay, now I'm confused why it couldn't be saved then. :whip:

The system doesn't have it marked read only so it must be being protected by some security software on your system I'm guessing.

Unless you wanna try one more time, and confirm the error message your getting when you try to save it. Maybe the exact error message will help me figure out who's blocking it from being written. I don't use it, but I think Norton's or even McAfee's software might do something like that...

Carry on....... :D

For what it is worth... some input

--It saved on mine (I put the # sign at the beginning of the line, if that matters)
-- but I do not use NORTONS or McAfee , I use AVG