Usenet Explorer

I left UE last night - everything was working fine. Sometime last night downloading stopped - permanently. When I click the little box, no check. Just sits there. Headers SEEM to work fine.

Maybe the cat stepped on the keyboard and set somthing wrong?

I tried in a different Windows installation but no help. (Same program and database.)

What should I DOOOOOOO????????

OK I read a little further and fixed it. Seems that the internet also crashed last night and UE disconnected all servers. I never did fix it, just trashed the WinDhit installation. But the servers of course were still disconnected. Clicked "Attach All Server" and now everything is fine.


DUH!

there was something in the middle like system lockup or power failure so you didn't shut down the system properly?

for such a case you can check properties->general->settings backup.

also maybe not related to the check box above you can restore your older settings from the settings directory (read UE.txt look for backup section) if you didn't restart UE too many times since then.

i don't know maybe to make the settings backup option checked by default, just it would bring a little more disk activity, noone reads UE.txt

No, there is a minor bug, actually part of a feature, that is so small I never mentioned it. Seems that you have designed UE to automatically disconnect servers which do not have the newsgroup. On certain errors UE gets confused and disconnects servers which have NO newsgroups - I.E., the internet has crashed and UE can't reach the server at all. UE then assumes that the "unreachable" newsgroups don't exist and disconects ALL servers from ALL newsgroups! I have run into it several times but having a learning disability I always forget the solution - simply reattach all servers when the internet is fixed. UE will then disconnect the servers automatically that actually don't exist on the first "get headers" operation and everything is back to normal.

The "symptom" is rather confusing - when you try to check a file for download, it just does not check! I assume you also loose your download que because UE will try to download every file, fail, and remove it but I don't worry about loosing my que - I don't just select for download, I also FLAG every file I want to download. The flag never gets lost, although there are several situations where the que will get lost. I can always restore my que by simply sorting on flagged files and downloading them all.

no. it only disconnects servers which return the following error string "411 no such newsgroup", it only may be triggered with regular newsgroups on downloading headers (xpat, import etc. are not affected). i'm 100% sure about it.

but sometimes providers like newsfeeds used to redirect servers and if the replacement server doesn't have the newsgroup it will return the error so the sever will be detached.

if you have such a problem you may uncheck "properties->general->autodetach servers when no such newsgroup", probably it is what you want.

also for some case check "properties->general->settings backup", it still could be some system problem with shutdown, you just didn't notice it.

a little unrelated but if one unchecks "get bodies" for all servers the program also won't mark articles for download (servers will remain attached though)