"Ian Field" wrote in message
news

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...


"Lee" wrote in message
...
On 14/01/2012 01:45, Arfa Daily wrote:


So anyone else had any problems ? Any of the computah
deep-understanders
on here, got any idea what exactly Avast is doing to cause this
behaviour, or what has started it ?

Arfa

Firstly, if you are using the same isp as you email address, their news
server (or their implementation of it) is known to be flakey on occasion
so it may just be them and the Avast thing is a coincidence...

Avast used to complain about my ssl connections to Gmail and Eternal
September but since update 6.0.1367 it's been quite happy about them.




I do use both their mail and news servers by default, and yes, I have in
the past had some 'issues', often a weekends, and usually associated with
server maintenance, upgrading, or migration. I have a friend who works
for them, and I can usually find out if anything has gone on when there's
been a problem.

However, in this case, it does not appear to be server / ISP related. I
did suspect that it might be, so I Googled for another free-access news
server, and put that into Xnews. It behaved exactly the same.

Thanks to all so far for the useful and interesting insights.

Arfa

Xnews on my PC has been playing up for a few days (I don't use Avast).

It started with both sliders at the RHS so it only downloaded a couple of
headers, when I moved the start slider to the LHS it took most of the day
only to fail woth out of memory error.

At each try I halved the start slider until it completed getting headers
and displayed ready - the latest article was dated December.

Then I double checked the finish slider was hard to the RHS and set the
start slider just a smidge to its left, with group/findI was then able to
search the most recent file in my downloads folder and resume tagging from
there on.

Late last year there were problems with one or more virus spammers
uploading *HUGE* numbers of rar files all the same size - Xnews couldn't
handle that many headers!



Hmmm. Oddly enough, I've been having that as well with my Xnews. I just
assumed that it was all part and parcel of the original problem, until I
discovered the Avast connection. I just went and tried a couple of groups,
and same thing, except sliders as far apart as they can go. This is a pretty
quick computer, and the 'net connection is 20 meg so it will download all
those headers in a relatively short space of time, but of course, they go
back a long way, and although the headers are there, the message bodies seem
not to be, and you get the "message not found - shall I search Google"
message. Thing is, I've never quite figured in Xnews, what exactly invokes
the window with the sliders in, when you enter a group. You seem to get it
on some, but not on others. And then ones that you do get it on, will
suddenly stop showing it, and will only download 'new' article headers for
weeks, before suddenly starting to show it again. Has that been your
experience as well ? I wish I knew where the setting was to stop it coming
up so that only new headers were loaded, and why it seems to reset itself
from time to time. Anyone know ? If you really want to download all the
headers, you can always invoke that window manually with the "Refresh
Headers Special" setting in the "Groups" drop down.

Arfa