Server Down?

Mine stopped working Wednesday around 4:54am. My one at home still works though. As far as I know, nothing was changed in our firewall at work.

When I do a netstat, it does show:
TCP mymachine:4994 desktop3.weather.com:http ESTABLISHED
TCP mymachine:4996 desktop3.weather.com:http ESTABLISHED

but I still get the “Error: Server Not Found”

WinXP Pro. P4 2.8ghz with 512 megs of memory. No firewall on this machine but am NATed. No changes on our gateway/firewall to my knowldege.

I, also, have been unable to update my forecast for some days. No known changes in software or hardware here. I just installed Beta, hoping a new version may know something else, no help.

Just a heads up. Looking forward to a return to normal.

-John
Spring, Texas

Same problem here. Mine hasn’t updated since the 15th- I’m getting a “server not found” error when I try to update. No changes in the system, no trouble connecting to anything else.

Well folks, now I don’t know anymore. When I gave the instructions above, I was on my wife’s Win98SE machine with WW 5.5c. It is working fine.

Now I am on my Win2000sp4 machine with WW 5.6 B3 and it is stuck on the same temperature it was on at least a day ago. I’ve played with the options tab for Update and have manually clicked it to update. Netstat shows ESTABLISHED, but no updating occurs. Weather.com does display current information on its website when I double-click WW to go to their website.

Both machines use Zone Alarm and have had no changes. Both have all MS Windows updates.

Don’t know.

– PatrickB

Hi,

I got same trouble using W2k sp4 and Netgear adsl modem/router
(i replaced my old eci usb modem and set internet settings at the same time)

i fixed probleme setting isp proxy in IE6 connection settings as it is specified by my isp (lucky man !)

Now WW works !

Mike, see DL.exe, may be a bug is still here
Looks like a proxy setting problem

Toniosco, France

Could it have been one of the series of patches Microsoft put out? I havent updated my one at home which still works (winxp) but did install the patches on my work machine (winxp) on Wednesday morning.

That is the only thing that I can think of that is different. Did anyone else install the patches from microsoft?

I guess that I will install the patches at home and see if that breaks WW. Ill post the results tomorrow.

As per the Singerscreations Home Page, Enabling the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” Internet Explorer setting might cause Weather Watcher updates to fail.

True. Mine did. Unchecked that option and now works. Bingo.

(I would like to be able to use that option, though.)

  • John Vaughn
    Spring, Texas

Yup. That fixed mine too.

I can confirm that unchecking the “do not save encrpyted pages to disk” in Internet Options>Advanced corrects the problem in Win98SE.

The Feb.09 MS IE 6.0 Cummulative Update (MS05-014 ?) must have been the culprit. This sucks. I visit a lot of encrypted sites (banks and suppliers) for personal and business use. My understanding is that this option prevented any writing of the encrypted pages to the Temporary Internet Files Folder. Does checking the box “Empty Temporary Internet Files Folder when browser is closed” essentially achieve the same thing? If so, then the risk exposure is only when I have to leave the computer, which at work I have to do a lot. That would mean I have to remember to close the browser immediately after visiting encrypted sites. What a pain.

Dennis

I guess the easiest way to remedy this problem is to add an option in Weather Watcher to temporarily disable the “Do not saved encrypted pages to disk” setting while the weather information is being downloaded. Does anyone else have any other suggestions?

Good catch Mike. But there has to be something more going on. My SP2 system has all the current WUs on and that option is not checked for my IE.

And I see no reason why anyone would manually set it on.

Did a WU turn it on for systems without an AV running? Or an unsupported AV or an outdated one?

Ed

EdP, the same goes for me. I installed all of the Windows updates last night on my computer (XP SP2) and that setting was not checked.

I was browsing around on the Internet last night, and I did come across some Windows updates that enabled that setting. However, those Windows updates were not mandatory Windows updates.

In any case, it seems that I have to add this new option to Weather Watcher in order to solve the problem for those people who wish to enable that IE setting.

It might be worthwhile to find how many people require that setting to be set. And why.

An alternate solution may be to simply add a test to WW that checks the setting and displays a warning if it is set.

So many questions regarding this “Do not save encrypted files to disk” option. Like, why not?? Or why would I do that in the 1st place? Or why does WW require encrypted files be saved to disk? Apparently encrypted files has more to do than protect secure data since WW or Weather.com uses them.

Ed

Running xp sp1 here. I believe my work has the policy to only install critical updates. Maybe the reason is because of sp1.

The problem is not completely dependent on setting of the “do not save encrypted” switch. There are two machines in our office. Mine is a Win98SE updated to the Feb. 09 MS patches, with antivirus and Zone Alarm firewall. The other has XP-sp2 updated to the Feb. 09 MS patches, with antivirus and XP-sp2 firewall activated. Both had “do not save encrypted” checked. The XP-sp2 machined never batted an eye. The Win98SE machine won’t work UNLESS I uncheck the setting.

The only downside I have on the Win98SE machine is that I have some risk exposure if I leave an encrypted site and do not close my browser. In my particular office setting, only the boss or I even know how to turn on the computer. The Temporary Internet Files get cleared when I close the browser because I checked that off. If someone were to access or steal the hard disk, and the files haven’t yet been over written, someone could theoretically access that information.

I can live with the situation for now.

Dennis

Well, you guys are correct. Once I unchecked the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” in the Advanced options in MSIE on my Win2000 SP4 machine, WW updates the temperature and forecasts just fine now. Note that the wallpaper always did update properly.

Okay, so it is working, but I would prefer not to be forced to save encrypted pages to disk. Is this a Microsoft issue or a WW issue or a Weather.com issue?

Nothing changed in WW on my machine last week, but a change by MS or Weather.com may have exposed a flaw in WW.

… OR Microsoft may have created a new bug during the udpates, but I updated on Patch Tuesday and did not notice the WW issue for another week.

… OR Weather.com may have changed something about their feed that made MSIE treat the data as encrypted, so it would not save it to disk, then WW could no longer access it.

I am able only to speculate.

– PatrickB

I guess part of the question becomes who has access to the pc running WW, would they know what IE temp files are and where to find them, and would they be able to find files that they could view that would contain sensitive data. I just looked at my Temporary Internet Files folder and there is a LOT of junk in there. .js files and .gifs and .jpgs and cookies and .css and .htm and etc files.

Overall, I think the odds of finding something sensitive in the waste basket next to the desk would be greater. But each client will have to assess their own risk.

There is a recent MS Knowledge Base page describing a problem with the setting at http://support.microsoft.com/default.as … -us;260650 . There could be other ramifications as a result of the broken code.

I lean to this being an MS problem. But more specific info would have to be gathered before they could look into it, primarily why does the problem exist for some and not others. What’s the link between the various OSs and machines that are having problems and what caused the setting to be activated for them?

Ed

Thanks EdP. I started with the article you found, then began searching on my own.

Mike, does WW download anything except plain ascii text from Weather.com to update the forecasts? The icons are all locally stored aren’t they?

Using the term: “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” – including the quotation marks in order to get the exact match, I found on Microsoft’s Knowledgebase articles that mention SSL and https and problems saving graphics files. Those do not appear to be the issue.

I used the same term in a Google Search and began to get some interesting results. I am posting them here to for brainstorming purposes.

1) </font id=“blue”>An IBM program, DWA, had this issue “Error encountered Retrieving Data" when ‘Do not Save Encrypted Pages to Disk’ Is Enabled” over a year ago due to a Microsoft update.
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg21162697
This page refers to some Microsoft patches.

2) </font id=“blue”>Internet Explorer Incorrectly Displays Web Pages
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=825057

This one suggests that perhaps an update to the Weather.com server could possibly cause an issue like the one we experienced due to use of Cascading Style Sheets or compression settings.

3) </font id=“blue”>Microsoft Internet Explorer does not properly handle cached HTTPS contents
http://addict3d.org/index.php?page=viewarticle&type=security&ID=2357
This is one reason everyone should want to leave the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” option checked. I noticed that some banks also recommend using that setting for online banking, as well as some government websites and travel agencies.

– PatrickB

No joy here. I was running 5.5 and had not been able to update since the 15th. Running XP pro w/ SP1. I tried unchecking the “do not save encrypted files to disk” in IE, and instead of the normal "server not found, it just sat there with “downloading weather data” and no progress. Tried upgading to the latest beta with th upgade, and nothing happened when clicking “retrieve forecast”. Not even the status window appeared. Uninstalled and downloaded the full version, and clicked "find city, and it comes up with “server not found”. Entered my zipcode and tried to retrieve forecast, and now I’m back to the status widow coming up and then “server not found” again.

Hi Fitz,

If you haven’t already, try this:

  1. Uninstall WW and reboot.
  2. Install WW and reboot.

Does the problem still exist?

– PatrickB