Several times today for an hour or more at a time I've been unable to get into Renderosity. I keep getting this screen (I have only one browser window open each time...

Still happening from time to time - it's like the site is counting each link clicked as another session without releasing any until the next time it flushes it's cache or whatrever the term is?

Two things spring to mind. Are you on a fixed IP or a pool? And is there a chance you could be suffering from the JS.Noclose virus? (See link in this forum header for more info on that one.)

More likely, are you accepting session cookies from this site?

"Are you on a fixed IP or a pool? I'm on DSL - dynamically assigned IP. "And is there a chance you could be suffering from the JS.Noclose virus?" I updated Norton & ran a complete scan to check the 3rd time it happened - the second time it happened I rebooted & as soon as it happened, and still got the message when I tried clicking in first thing. - I use XP, and I verified via Task Manager that IE was closed before clicking in from an Ebot notice and still got the message. "More likely, are you accepting session cookies from this site?" Yeah I am. I can be browsing the forums with no problems for a while, and then BAM I get the screen shown, and then nothing but the screen for every Renderosity link I click in favorites & Ebots. I can still visit other websites, just not Renderosity. An hour or two later, regardless if I tried anything in the meantime, I can get in again no problem. I saw the earlier post regarding Kierra being logged in 20 times at once when she wasn't even online, and I suspect this is similar and related to the new servers.

It just happened again - I've only been online since about 12:30 Renderosity time, clicked on 5-7 links, then started getting the white screen again. Only lasted about 20 minutes this time, but I still REALLY like it to stop happening.

It's happening to me as well. After being logged off of Renderosity for 8 to 10 hours and then trying ot log on, I got the max sessions exceeded error. Everything was fine for a while, I was offline for about two hours, came back and same error.

It happens to me all the time :( When it happens, I have to restart the computer(s) I'm on (normally 2) and then I can get into 'rosity again. We are on a DSL line, - and we're connected (a LAN) via a net server. It has never happened before. And it's VERY frustrating. I follow several different fora's and have to give up to try to keep updated in many of them, because it seems that every "refresh" I hit, - uses up some of my "'rosity" time... I really don't understand what the deal is. Britt

Okay now, this is weird - I wasn't able to get onto the site at all for 4 hours just now - I'd get Ebots, so I knew the site was up, but clicking in I'd just get a blank white window with no text, the progress-bar at the bottom would creeeeeeeeep along for about 6 minutes and just sit there flickering every 5 seconds but otherwise frozen about 99% of the way across. This happened 8-10 times. Finally I dug out my old laptop and patched it into my network and it could get on site okay, but still my primary unit couldn't. In desperation I found the ...*@www.renderosity.txt cookie file and renamed it to RendSite.bak. I clicked in again, & got in okay, but had to log in with the ...save password option (naturally). I've been clicking around without problems for about 20 minutes. Went to look in the new cookie to compare it to the old one, & noticed it didn't have the "www." in it's name. Contents were different as well, but I wonder if the new servers are choking on the old cookie name? I noticed I can click into the MarketPlace without having to password in for the first time in a week, also. "curiouser & curiouser...." Any further changes I'll post here.

I scanned my computer for vires just now, and I'm clean. So that's not the cause of the message. Britt

Yah, those were my cookie fixes from last weekend. That's why I asked you to make sure you were accepting session cookies. R

Guess I'm not familiar enough with the subject to understand what you mean - what's a "session cookie", how does it differ from the regular site cookie, and how in the world would I have configured to accept or not accept one? I store my password in the regular site cookie and have since I joined - I've never set up a filter to refuse cookies from the servers here......?

Session cookies are temporary cookies that stay for only as long as your browser is open. If you close all your browser windows, these cookies go away. They are never stored on your hard drive. 9 times out of 10, they are used to track your session on a website, which is why they are called session cookies. Normal cookies are saved on your drive and will persist for a long time. The person who set the cookies says how long they want it to stay. Modern browsers often let you accept/reject cookies differently depending on what type they are. Like in IE6, you can have it always accept session cookies and always reject normal cookies, or any combination thereof, etc. Renderosity uses both types of cookies, session cookies to track your session on here, a normal cookie to stop bandwidth theft, and normal cookies to save your username/password. R

fur Cool - I appreciate the clarification - I guess I should have remembered that, but I set up cookie crusher long ago, and it's been working so well in all that time I haven't had to concern myself with such details. I did check CC's filters, and Renderosity's cookies are set up to "always accept". So I didn't see what that might have to do with it. By the way - I think the recent improvements are really good. I hadn't realized you were in charge of them, but despite a few glitches and problems, the site keeps getting better & better! Kudos!

Thanks! R

I'm still having problems. My browser is set to accept all cookies, - and I still get the Max sessions for this IP address. Like I said, I'm connected to the net via a LAN and a netserver that is hooked up on a DSL line. I've tried "everything": I released the Netserver's IP adress, - and renewed it. I rebooted the netserver AND the two PC's I'm using, - and I still got the dreaded message. Now I'm running out of things to try. (I managed to get here after waiting a couple of hours). What can I do when this happens again?? Britt

Did you try what I did - Rename or delete your renderosity cookie & let the site create a new one when you log back in? I haven't had a problem since I did that one thing....

Whoops - spoke too soon! I'm typing this on my little laptop because I'm getting the original message & white-screen again on my main PC. fur - if it is somrthing to do with cookies, what should I be doing to prevent it? As I said, both CookieCrusher and IE6 are set to accept ALL cookies from Renderosity.

I've already set the browsers to accept the cookies. So I doubt that that's it. Britt

I just found a check-box in IE6's advanced security settings to "always allow session cookies" and checked it. I'm hoping that fixed it.

That was the one I was talking about! :-) R

I found it under Tools-> Internet Options.... (In case anyone else needs to find it) Thanks, fur!

thank you for the screen shot! :-) R

I really don't think you need to go to all that trouble. I've not changed the default settings of IE, other than refusing it to allow automatic logons to any site, which I did during my first use of IE (do this for every update as well). Meaning that I always log on when visiting Rendosity or any other site (Yahoo, MSN, WSJ, etc). IE is set for medium security, on my XP, 98SE, and ME boxes and I have never received any SQL notices, white screens, or the like. I'd suggest deleting all your cookies and cache files (I do this every few weeks just to clean out the drive), tell IE or Netscape not to remember passwords or automatically log on to a site, and make sure it checks for page updates every time you visit the site. You can always go back to your original setting later if you wish.

fur The original problem, as first posted above, is still recurring. I just had to boot my backup laptop to post this. Any other thoughts/suggestions/possibilities? (... on a positive note, the session-cookie modification seems to have made site navigation faster, while it lasts:-))

Just want to add that I have done the same thing -- deleted cookies, rebooted, etc. and I still get the error as well.

Lisa

Hmmm.. you don't have anything trying to download the site for offline viewing do you? Those things will eat through session cookies.

No, not at all. So far today, no errors. We'll see how it goes. :) Lisa

I mentioned in another thread but don't know if you saw it -- The "mark all read" function isn't working for me all the time. For example, right now I have one new message showing in the Poser Forum. If I open the forum and then "mark all read" when I get back to the Forums listing, it still shows one thread. I open the forum and it's the same thread with no new replies. I tried opening and reading the thread and then going back marking all read but get the same results. What's been happening is once someone posts a new message and I have at least one more new thread to read in the forum, opening the forum and marking all read at this point will work. This happens with all of the forums that I view. Not just the Poser Forum.

The problem I described in my first post above is happening again. I've been offline for a week or so while I moved. I just got DSL access back again at my new place. I spent 3-4 hours yesterdat browsing thru back posts I'd missed. Today when I first went to log on, I got the "Max sessions exceeded...." message again & couldn't get into the site no matter what I tried for about 3 hours (I was able to visit any other sites I tried in the meantime, just not Renderosity). Can you think of anything else I can try? One other thing I've noticed is that threads used to change color after reading in the forums so I could keep track of which I've looked at - now it doesn't seem to happen more than 10% of the time.

Same thing here. Was offline for a week while vacationing and browsed fine yesterday, but today I got Max sessions for this IP address again which lasted at least three hours. Haven't noticed the thread color thing here. They are still showing as "visited" to me.