Troubleshooting


Troubleshooting
Created: Dec 17, 2004
Article ID: 359175
Content Courtesy of Que
Troubleshooting
The biggest problem with the Web is connecting to the right Web
page.

URLs can be long and convoluted, and easily mistyped (either
by you—in your browser's Address box—or by the person coding a
hyperlink on another Web page). Chances are if you have trouble
accessing a page, you have the wrong URL.
In addition, Web sites are constantly revising their content,
design, and navigation. So it's not uncommon to click on a link and
get a different page than what you were expecting—or no page at
all!
One trick to try if you can't access a specific page on a Web
site is to try to access other pages on the site.

You can do this
by truncating the URL. For example, if you couldn't access
www.mysite.com/mydirectory/mypage.

html, then truncate the last part
of the URL and try accessing www.mysite.com/mydirectory/. If that
doesn't work, keep truncating until you get to the main site URL
(in this case, www.

mysite.com). On many sites, the
home page contains a search
function you can use to find specific pages on the site; it's
possible you can search for the page that you couldn't access,
in case the site administrator changed URLs on you.
Server and traffic issues can also temporarily block access to
overloaded Web sites.

(Only so many users can connect to a server
at one time, no matter how large the site—and servers sometimes are
taken "offline" for maintenance.) If you can't connect to a site
now, check your URL and try again a little later.
Sometimes your problem isn't whether you can connect, but rather
how long it takes you to connect. There can be several causes of
slow loading—a slow
Internet connection (via your
phone line), lots of traffic on the Internet (too many users
online at the same time), lots of traffic to a particular site
or page (too many users wanting to look at the same thing), or
very large graphics files on the destination Web page.

If you
think a page is taking too long to load, click your
browser's Stop button to cancel the loading, then click the
Refresh or Reload button to try accessing the page again.
Sometimes just trying again will get you to the page faster!
It's also possible that your connection problems aren't
site-related. Try connecting to more than one site; if you can load
other sites, the problem could be with the original site server, or
there could be some sort of routing problem (either with your ISP
or with the Internet in general) that is temporarily blocking
access to that specific site.
Next, you should try doing something non-Web-related—check your
e-mail, or try to access a chat room.

If you can execute other
Internet-related tasks, then your ISP might have a problem with its
gateway to the Web. You may have to wait a few minutes (or hours!)
for the gateway to unclog; if the problem persists, call your ISP's
voice support line and report the problem.
If you can't access the Web at all and you can't perform
other Internet-related tasks (if you get errors when trying to
check your e-mail, for example), then your problem most likely lies
in your connection to your ISP. End your current connection, then
reconnect.


Oftentimes establishing a new connection solves this type of
problem. If you continue to lack Internet access on subsequent
connections, check your configuration information. If the situation
persists, call your ISP's voice support line and report the
problem—its connection to the entire Internet might be down.
If you jump to a page and the page "hangs" or only partially
loads, there may be several causes.

First, the page may actually
still be loading, but it's a really big page and it's not done yet;
click the Stop button on your browser and then try reloading the
page. (Note that pages that contain background sounds and
music can appear to be hung,
but are actually just waiting for the
music file to download.) Second,
the connection to this site may have gone bad in mid-load; if you
can't reload this and other pages, disconnect from your ISP, wait a
few minutes, and then reconnect. Finally, the problem may be with
your Web browser; try "flushing" your browser's cache and history
files to clear disk space and memory.


If the page loads fully but doesn't look right, note that some
pages incorporate advanced technologies—such as Java and Macromedia
Shockwave—that may not be compatible with all Web browsers. If you
get a blank space on your page, try reloading—but then check to
make sure your browser is capable of displaying these elements.
(That might mean adding a "plug-in" to your browser, or upgrading
to a more recent version.)
It's also possible that parts of the page referenced in the
underlying HTML code actually aren't there.

This is somewhat common
when dealing with graphics files; site designers will reference
.JPG and .GIF files elsewhere on the site (or on another site) that
subsequently disappear. Try right-clicking on the empty space where
the picture should be and selecting Load Picture from the pop-up
menu; if the picture still doesn't load, it's a problem with the
page, not with your browser.



[ Comment, Edit or Article Submission ]



.