For years, PIP has worked flawlessly for me--till I got a new laptop and W7. It seems to be a problem with being able to reach the server. The problem occurs in both IE and Chrome, but on rare occassions PIP works. Dunno why, but it's about one in 20 attempts. Here's the symptoms: 1. Most of the time, in any section, I cannot view any image(mine or anyone else's) that was posted with PIP. I see this: If I try to open the image that is now represented by that little square thingie in a new tab, I get a "Oops! Google Chrome could not find cliff.hostkansas.com" error in Chrome and a similar error in IE.
PIP loads fine. Pretty sure I have the current version, and have even re-installed the program a couple of times to no avail. I can do everything , including browsing the pics on my computer, select one, the image does show up in the PIP box, but when I click the "POST IT!" button, I get a "cannot find server error.
The above pics were posted via Image Shack.
I am running Kapersky AV, and have PIP allowed and in the "trusted" category in Kapersky.
In Win7 Firewall, I have PIP allowed, but by default, it is enabled in private/work, but not public.
What am I doing wrong?
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 08-21-2013).]
I get the same issue if I'm surfing on a slow connection. Sometimes just reloading the page loads the picture, but not always. I don't use PIP to post pictures so I'm no help there.
I'm currently running on a Win7 Enterprise x64 machine with Chrome. At home I use a Win7 Pro x64 with Chrome. And I also use my stock Galaxy Note 2 running Android 4.1.2 using Chrome.
First of all, this is not a PIP problem. So reinstalling PIP will not help.
This is a problem with your DNS. A DNS (or Domain Name Server) is a server on the internet that handles the translation of a domain name (like www.fiero.nl or cliff.hostkansas.com) to a physical address on the internet. This physical address is called an "IP address" and looks something like this: 74.119.147.87.
So whenever a program on your computer (be it your browser or PIP) wants to connect to a server by domain name, your computer first sends a request to the DNS asking for the domain's IP address. The computer then uses the IP address to actually contact the right server. And this is where it goes wrong on your computer.
For some reason, every now and then the DNS your computer uses (which is usually maintained by your internet service provider) doesn't know the physical address of the domain cliff.hostkansas.com. Most of the time this is caused by a poorly configured DNS.
There are a few ways to solve this problem. One is by hard-coding the IP address of cliff.hostkansas.com on your computer. But the problem is, IP addresses can change every now and then and when it does, your computer will be trying to contact the wrong IP address.
The easiest solution is to use another DNS since the one you are currently using is not working properly. Changing the DNS is easy but depends on your setup.
I'm pretty dumb when it comes to 'network' but I think the answer is "Yes" I'm on a home network. I share the Verizon wireless card my wife has--we can run 5 devices from it according to the terms of the contract.
Huh. Never would have thought a DNS issue would only affect 1 site. Every DNS issue I've had has affected whole swaths of my connectivity. Next time this issue creeps up, I'll give my DNS a flush and see what happens.
Huh. Never would have thought a DNS issue would only affect 1 site. Every DNS issue I've had has affected whole swaths of my connectivity. Next time this issue creeps up, I'll give my DNS a flush and see what happens.
I asked that before in another thread several months ago. I'm not computer saavy enough to say one way or another, and tho I have had a few DNS errors in the last 8 months, they too affected every website I tried to go to.
Maybe NSA is checking up on my activities. The last pic I posted btw in the wasp thread was via PIP--but it hasn't worked since. I think, instead of asking Cliff to devote any more of his time to this, I will contact Verizon and maybe get someone local to look at my computer network configuration.
I do appreciate your help Cliff, but pretty sure you have better things to do than guess what's going on on a computer 1/2 a world away.
I wonder if this could be part of my problem with reaching PIP server? I randomly get it about once per month, for no apparent reason and can't see that anything is wrong at the time.
Huh. Never would have thought a DNS issue would only affect 1 site.
Most of the time It doesn't and affects a lot of sites. But unless you visit more sites coming from the same DNS zone, or same authoritative DNS (or whatever block of domain names is affected by this) you won't notice. And yes, it could also affect a single site.
quote
Originally posted by maryjane:
Win7
Open Network Connections by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box (at the top right of the Control Panel window), type adapter, and then, under Network and Sharing Center, click View network connections.
Right-click Local Area Connection, and then click Properties. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
In the window that appears, under This connection uses the following items, click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and then click Properties.
To specify a new DNS server address, click Use the following DNS server addresses, and then, in the Preferred DNS server box enter 8.8.8.8 and in the Alternate DNS server box enter 8.8.4.4.
Click OK twice.
You shouldn't have to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect, but just to be sure, reboot your computer anyway.
Try photobucket..It seems to work with no problems.
Which is the number one reason people are seeing red X's on the forum.
The image server PIP uses might have it's quirks (it hosts hundreds of thousands of images on a single server that isn't optimized for this and hosts other sites as well) but at least the images will for ever remain accessible. Photobucket accounts come and go. Especially if you browse the archives, you will find a lot of threads where the pictures are no longer available. And every single time it's because people posted the pictures on Photobucket or Imageshack or any of the other free image hosts. Heck, some pictures were even posted on an image server from a guy who offered PFF members free image hosting and insisted the images would be available forever. And he took the image server down at the first little pissing match he had on PFF.
You are of course free to post the images wherever you want. But if you post using PIP, as long as PFF is up, so are the images.
I understand PIP might not be working for everyone, but 99.9% of the time that's because of firewalls blocking PIP access to the internet. If PIP's not working, then go look for a reason on your PC why it isn't. PIP isn't doing anything special. But if it's prevented from doing what it wants to do then obviously it's not going to work.
Originally posted by Cliff Pennock:Most of the time It doesn't and affects a lot of sites. But unless you visit more sites coming from the same DNS zone, or same authoritative DNS (or whatever block of domain names is affected by this) you won't notice. And yes, it could also affect a single site.
I was (kinda) aware that it could happen, I've just never seen it happen.
Much appreciated Cliff!! I will try to make these changes later today, as I have some "have to do" online stuff first, in case I screw something up. Even tho your instructions are pretty clear--I'm sure I can still find a way to mess it up.
All this beats my theory anyway--that one, involves a stateside (Texas) computer, a willing internet provider, (Verizon) an overseas forum, a Canadian image host, and................the NSA.
When we got a new computer and allowed the kids to use it, we set up parental controls. For whatever reason, PIP pictures were blocked with those controls in place. To solve it, we set up different users so I can log in as me and the kids can log in as them and still get the parental filters.
