Timing Out

First, sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, I thought this would fit here..

I have a problem that I just can not seem to figure out... about 5pm on Friday, 2/12/2010, I went to go to my site via FF and got this message:

The connection has timed out

The server at https://www.mydomain.com is taking too long to respond.

*   The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
      moments.

*   If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
      connection.

*   If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
      that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

I had just finished re-installing my site in the root after I had to take it down due to technical 'glitch' - story for another day.

The only 2 addons that I had installed at the time were the 2 avail in the free addsons section to backup the store and the dbase.

My site never times out, so I called my hosting company and they brought my site up with no problems in both FF and IE8. They had suggested that it might be an ISP issue. So I gave it some time. I also tried to pull it up in IE and was NOT able to. I then verified that I could access my site via FTP and I can.

Here is the kicker, I can still use my control panel (cPanel) which from what I understand runs off my domain, right (mydomain.com:1000/frontend....)?

I can browse the web and load any site, but when I travel to my site, it ALWAYS times out!

I also ran a virus scan on my computer and it came up clean.

I believe that I have narrowed this down to an incorrect setting in FF/IE/or my computer.

My hosting company told me to check firewalls and proxy settings. How do I do that? Any suggestions or ideas?

You might want to provide a link to the site so we can see if it times out for us.

Other than that, rebooting your computer and figuring out what you have changed since you could view youir site are possible options.

stevesh:

You might want to provide a link to the site so we can see if it times out for us.

Other than that, rebooting your computer and figuring out what you have changed since you could view youir site are possible options.

Good thinking... here you go,
http://www.a u t o m o t i v e a c e.com

That will bring up a simple 'Coming soon page' (.html in lieu of .php)

To go to the ZC site simply put a /index.php after the domain.

Loads fine for me - I'm seeing a stock install using the default template with demo products.

I see the same as Stevesh does here in California, no problem.

Hey thanks guys, I do appreciate you checking it out for me.

This pretty much confirms that it is something to do with my computer. I don't get it, I haven't not changed any settings that I know of, unless I did something inadvertently.

I wish FF would give me more an error message. I guess I will have to do some googling here. If you guys can think of anything, please let me know.

Have you tried other browsers on that machine?

I don't know if this means anything but I tried to load my site again, same error and then I went to Tools > Error Console and clicked on messages and it had this listed twice:

Invalid chrome URI: /

Does that mean anything?

stevesh:

Have you tried other browsers on that machine?

Yes, I have IE7 (have yet to upgrade to IE8) on my machine also. I figured that between FF and IE, that should cover the vast majority of the visitors to my site.

I'm not sure if this is the cause, but I went to the tab in FF that has my site loaded with the error message and clicked on View > Character Encoding and Unicode (UTF-8) has the bullet next to it NOT Western (ISO-8859-1).

Could that be it? It should be Western (ISO-8859-1) right?

The site loads for me fine too, without errors.

I wouldn't think that the character set would cause any sort of timeout.

A timeout suggests that you've got something blocking access to it from your PC. Perhaps a firewall software app gone bad?

DrByte:

The site loads for me fine too, without errors.

I wouldn't think that the character set would cause any sort of timeout.

A timeout suggests that you've got something blocking access to it from your PC. Perhaps a firewall software app gone bad?

thanks DrByte, I'll check into that.

But it should be Western (ISO-8859-1) instead of Unicode (UTF-8) right?

Zen Cart v1.x, out-of-the-box, using the default english language files, has the CHARSET set to iso-8859-1
Why yours is showing otherwise is unknown at this point

DrByte:

Zen Cart v1.x, out-of-the-box, using the default english language files, has the CHARSET set to iso-8859-1
Why yours is showing otherwise is unknown at this point

The only firewall I have running is the standard one that comes with Windows XP. And I haven't changed any settings on that. I have Windows Defender on and I have AVG on. AVG was actually installed on Sat night and this started happening Fri evening - so I don't think its the AVG software.

How does one change the CHARSET? Is it a browser setting or a machine setting?

searching for "charset" in the FAQ area brings up a couple articles. Here's one: https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=26

DrByte:

searching for "charset" in the FAQ area brings up a couple articles. Here's one: https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=26

I have the correct setting according to the article. I guess the only other thing to do is restore my machine to a point where I knew the site was coming up - would that be your recommendation?

I honestly have no idea what's causing it to not work on just your computer.
In my opinion what you're suggesting is an extremely drastic move.

I went to proceed with a System Restore and went to a point on Fri when I knew I could access my site and I saw that the 'restore point' was labeled 'Software Distribution Service 3.0'

Being that Windows Update did run and install updates Fri morning, I googled it and clicked on a results that was similar to my issue, 'Software Distribution Service 3.0, can not connect to the internet'. I read all the posts and they were generally the same. People could not load pages or connect to the internet.

I have a meeting to go to now but I am going to research further into this and hopefully be able to report back with good news (i.e. the solution).

Thanks for your help.

DrByte:

I honestly have no idea what's causing it to not work on just your computer.
In my opinion what you're suggesting is an extremely drastic move.

I know, neither do I :lamo:

I'm out of ideas, and I honestly do not know how else to troubleshoot it. If you have any other ideas on how to diagnose please let me know.

I will probably proceed with the System Restore tomorrow. Right now I'm late for a meeting!!!