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View Full Version : here's a challenge (tech prob no one can figure out)


Trip59
4-29-04, 12:37 AM
I can't really give out the address I'm talking about, so let's talk theoretical.

Two to three thousand people can get to a website and get around in it. Fifteen people cannot (to this point) They get 404 messages, 500 messages, 403 messages. They will get these messages at the exact moment I am browsing the same page on the phone with them. The problem is about two weeks old, none of the problems have gone away. Sometimes if I give them links that are usually internal (from other pages in the site) they can get in.

There is no common thread that I can find, some are 2000 pro, XP home, XP pro, all have at least tried IE even if they use other browsers. some are on dialup some on broadband. they are around the country. So no common OS, Browser, ISP, Connection type, Software, nothing. Some have used Kazaa, others haven't even heard of it. I have had all the people experiencing problems run several virus scanners, as well as several adware/spyware scanners, no help.

This thing is stumping the hell out of me, will probably get me a promotion if I could resolve it (fingers crossed) or at least a raise. Please, ANY ideas welcome. Call this a challenge, neither I nor any of the admins have been able to figure this out.

The site is on Windows servers, all .asp pages. Three separate vendors make up the entire online presence, they can't figure it out either, so I am wondering if it is on the users end.

extras
4-29-04, 04:05 AM
Well, I'm not a pro but I like toruble shooting.
But...you didn't give us lots of information.

I don't need to know the URL or anything.
Still you had better gather errorlog entries for these,
and corresponding access_log entries,
as well as successful entries to compare against them.

Also, time of the day and trafic condition at the time of
these errors may give us a hint...if it is a server side.

It could be combination of many things, as well.
403,404 error caused by typing wrong URL in addressbar,
500 caused by cgi error, and so on.

Anyway, I think you had better get more info,
and compare one by one rather than treating
everything in general.

Oh, the presence of MS Office stuff in client PC may create
strange reaction from server.(405,406 followed by 403, etc)
I had a few strange errors in my log, and it was caused by
a part of MS word according to the user.
It was trying to access DAV things and failing.
I first thought it was a cracking attempt.

Recently, I had another strange 500 error.
It turned out to be a robot sending HTTP/0.9 header
without HTTP_HOST and one line of my script was
failing because of that.

I took me a while to identify these.
Experienced pro would be quicker....

ToI2n_knIgHt
4-29-04, 02:39 PM
It could possible be that the network these people are on have a web filter that for some reason blocks this site. Or maybe the ISP has a web filter. Check with the Network Admins of these areas or ISP and ask them to check in there web filter software or hardware to see if they have this site blocked. I know that maybe a hardware like iPrism form URL=http://www.stbernard.com]http://www.stbernard.com[/URL] has preset pages that can not be viewed. I would venture to bet it has to do with some sort of web content filtering solution that is causing this.

Trip59
4-29-04, 05:46 PM
no filters, bunch of unrelated computers.

Actually, the problem was discovered a few hours ago. Two weeks and the admins were swearing that it wasn't them, turns out it was a badly written page logging script. Thanks for the thoughts and help though

Destroyer
5-5-04, 02:46 PM
i dont know if this is your problem, but ThinkGeek.com had a simaler issue that was caused by some software they had installed and norton internet security was blocking access to it, but people could navigate to certain parts of the site that the software wasnt used on. there were no messages from norton about the site being blocked, it just went ahead and did it